The Drop (2014 Michael R Roskam)

Tom Hardy pulls off a perfect New York accent and comes over a bit simple, and somehow triumphs - or does he? - in somewhat murky ending. Dennis Lehane wrote the novels of 'Mystic River' and 'Gone Baby Gone', and a few episodes of The Wire, and he adapted this from his own short story 'Animal Rescue', featuring, as it does, a rescued dog.

He and James Gandolfini (his last film) run a bar that is itself run by Chechins, and 'The Drop' is when all the illegal Brooklyn money is deposited. You'd think it would be stolen, but it isn't, though we think Gandolfini was after it, and that's why he's iced in an alley - thus it is all a bit murky, but Hardy does connect with Noomi Rapace and does away with Matthias Schoenaerts, who's difficult to spell and annoying, maintaining the rescued dog is his dog. John Ortiz investigates on behalf of the LAPD or wherever they are - OK, it was actually filmed in New York (by Nicolas I, Tonya Karakatsanis).

We watched it, of that I'm certain, and a good chunk of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, which was after it - a sort of guilty bad pleasure that kept us up too late; you can't trust people whose eyes are too blue, you see.