Everybody has a past…There
are some sins that you commit, that you can’t come back from, no matter how
hard you try.
—Bob Saginowski
Listen, listen, just
take it easy. Listen to me. That is life. That’s what it is. People like me, coming along when you’re not
looking.
—Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts)
Only Roskam’s second film, following the international
acclaim received with the bleak but riveting Belgian film 2012
Top Ten Films of the Year: #6 Bullhead (Rundskop) , which immediately caught
the attention of Hollywood executives who invited him to make his second film
in America, offering him the script of well-known screenwriter, Dennis Lehane,
who penned Clint Eastwood’s MYSTIC RIVER (2003), Ben Affleck’s Gone
Baby Gone (2007), and Martin Scorsese’s SHUTTER ISLAND (2010), not to
mention several episodes of the popular television show The Wire (2004 – 08), so he is a proven commodity. Working with Lehane’s short story Animal Rescue set in Boston, the
filmmaker has assembled an extraordinary international cast and makes the most
of it, transporting the film to a non-descript Brooklyn neighborhood where
dirty money changes hands on a nightly basis.
The story centers around a neighborhood dive bar known as Cousin Marv’s,
the name of the former owner, the late James Gandolfini in his final role,
wearing a New York Jets hoodie, hanging Yankees and Giants posters on the walls,
who lost his bar nearly a decade ago to Chechen gangsters, but continues to run
the place, making regular payments to the mob, who make deals, investments, collect
on bets won or lost, and at the end of the night the money has to end up
somewhere, where the last stop along the way is a money drop funneling cash to
organized crime in an underworld network of Brooklyn bars, where the location
changes from day to day to keep the heat off of any one specific bar. The noirish inner narration is provided by
Marv’s street savvy bartender, Bob Saginowski, Tom Hardy from Locke (2013)
channeling Brando’s Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan’s ON THE WATERFRONT (1954),
where he’s a local kid from the neighborhood seemingly without much education,
who doesn’t talk much but is a straight up guy, honest, hard working, and
dependable, where Marv is his actual cousin, and the two have a familiar way of
talking to one another as if they’ve known each other for years, which of
course they have. Nothing phases these
two guys, as they’ve been through it all, but they’re a bit taken aback when a
couple of punks wearing masks rob the place one night, taking $5000 of mob
money out of the register. A visit from
Chovka (Michael Aronov) and his heavies wanting their money back doesn’t make
them rest any easier, where they’re on the hook for the missing money.
When an overly curious cop (John Ortiz) shows up sniffing
around for clues, he recognizes Bob from seeing him at mass, but also that he
hasn’t taken communion in over twenty years, suggesting his watchful eyes and
ears are everywhere. At about the same
time, Bob discovers a wounded pit bull puppy abandoned in a trash can, where
the home owner, Nadia (Noomi Rapace), invites him in and helps clean up the
dog, where they become friends, of a sort, where both seem to be harboring a
world of secrets, scarred and wounded souls themselves that are otherwise
nearly completely disconnected from the rest of the world with no friends, no social
life, no real prospects for the future, but go about their daily business in
the light of day seemingly invisible to others.
These are the kinds of characters that inhabit Lehane stories, thieves,
thugs, and hard guys, as he specializes in establishing authenticity in working
class neighborhoods, where cinematically retaining his attention to detail is
essential, filled with characters who are dark and moody, usually still haunted
by disturbing incidents or horrible choices from their past, living lives of
sin and redemption, where it’s not at all surprising to find some that are
nearly doomed, as tragedy awaits their every step. After Bob takes the dog home and tries to
provide a normal and stable environment, he’s visited by an ominously dangerous
figure, Eric Deeds, Matthias Schoenaerts from Bullhead
(Rundskop) (2011) and Rust
and Bone (De rouille et d'os) (2011), who likely inflicted the damage to
both the dog and Nadia, whose brooding presence, and the knowledge that he
likely killed one of Marv’s old customers, is a continuous threat. Both men are lonesome characters defined by
keeping things to themselves, hiding some sort of shady past, but have now
apparently gone straight. Bob’s
connection to Nadia has been transforming, both for the dog and himself, but
Eric wants them both back, threatening to inflict more damage on the dog if
there is any trouble. While Bob is busy
dealing with the insane presence of Eric, reminiscent of the demented
criminality of Peter Stormare in Fargo
(1996), Marv has the mob to answer to, where this mysterious interplay in and
out of a shadowy world provides tense and creepy atmosphere throughout. The film is a pensive, darkly troubling slow
burn of unfolding events, where the somber music by Marco Beltrami and Raf
Keunen never interferes, remaining quietly atmospheric in the background, where
the film accentuates the performances of the characters, trusting the depth and
complexity they bring to the screen.
While the short story was written ten years ago, Lehane
expanded the screenplay for the making of the movie, and only afterwards wrote
a short novel to support the film.
Opening with a group of men toasting a friend who died (or was murdered)
ten years ago, a kid named Richie Whalen, aka Glory Days, where Marv offers
free shots on the house, while muttering to Bob that these men “need to move
on.” Marv is a kind of gloomy character
who will never be satisfied because life didn’t turn out the way he wanted, so
he nitpicks and harps on every last little detail, believing life doesn’t offer
anybody a chance. When the mob money
mysteriously arrives all covered in blood in a plastic sack, after a long pause
awaiting the verdict, Chovka is satisfied with the results, announcing the
biggest drop of the year will take place in the bar on Super Bowl Sunday. Drenched in brooding atmosphere, the film is
a parade of compelling characters that are continually underplayed throughout,
where in the criminal world emotions are viewed as a weakness, so instead this
is a minimalist film noir that continually explores the dark side of human
nature. Violence in this film is
continually alluded to, but comes infrequently, yet the effect can be startling,
where lives are spinning in the balance, as Roskam does an excellent job
drawing the audience into this bleak yet lurid world, inhabited by such
world-weary figures. As Eric, who is
little more than a thug, puts pressure on Bob to return his dog, he decides to
take ten grand for the dog as his final offer, due by the next day. When Bob protests that some stranger can’t just
walk into somebody’s life and expect ten grand, Eric has the perfect answer
that may as well be the theme of the film, “Listen, listen, just take it
easy. Listen to me. That is life.
That’s what it is. People like
me, coming along when you’re not looking.”
True enough, this is a film that plays with the audience’s expectations,
that dangles possibilities out there like a carrot on a stick and then goes in
another direction, as the real beauty of the film is figuring out what lays
underneath the surface, where people dwell on the past, but not always on what
you think, as often it’s different than what they tell you, offering a smokescreen
to hide the real truth. Roskam has the
audience guessing as to the true nature of each of these characters, where the
grizzled performances are among the year’s best, especially Tom Hardy, who
literally transforms himself into the role, the kind of part Harvey Keitel
would play in the Scorsese movies, as despite the seedy world that surrounds
him, he never wants to move far from the moral center, even as he deals with
such brutally dark extremes, where mob guys are capable of anything. The story has a savage center, where the beast
is in man, yet so is the possibility of redemption.
