In his first American film, Michaël R Roskam, the Belgian director of Bullhead, dares to emulate (or accidentally echo) one of the key relationships in US cinema.

Adapted by Dennis Lehane from his own story Animal Rescue, The Drop hangs around an old-school bar in a Brooklyn untroubled by artisanal cheese shops. Marv (James Gandolfini) used to be the owner – his name still hangs over the door. However, following complex financial catastrophes, he's ended up signing the property over to stereotypically gruff Chechen gangsters. Along the way, he has dragged his cousin Bob (Tom Hardy) down into the mire.

We will have to wait to hear exactly what went wrong, but it’s clear that, had he escaped Marv’s influence, Bob might have made something of himself.

Sound familiar? The film- makers must know that audiences will immediately think of an earlier film shot on the other side of Manhattan. Surprisingly, the interchanges between Gandolfini and Hardy compare favourably with those between Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. If anything, Hardy, a broad man with a boxer's face, is the equal of Brando in his ability to reveal the vulnerability beneath the rough service. In his last performance, the late Gandolfini excels as a character resigned to the consequences of youthful foolishness.

The story is not entirely sound. There is a great deal of shuffling before we eventually reach a satisfactory twist and a brilliant final shot. The film has, however, much more to recommend it. The relationship between Bob and Nadia (Noomi Rapace), former squeeze to one of the hoodlums, is played out nicely, but not quite so nicely as that between Bob and an abandoned puppy named Rocco.

Now, that really isn’t fair. There is no more cruel way of securing an audience’s attention than putting a dog or a cat in peril. That boy Lehane knows what he’s doing.