Ten Movie Tough Guys And The Dogs They Love
Because even the most hardened of killers needs a best friend.
Ten Movie Tough Guys And The Dogs They Love
In The Drop, which dropped into cinemas this week, Tom Hardy plays Bob Saginowski: a tough, solitary Brooklyn barman who discovers his tender side while raising an abused pit bull puppy he finds abandoned in a garbage bin belonging to Nadia (Noomi Rapace).
It’s based on ‘Animal Rescue’, a short story by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island).
Bob’s cousin Marv’s (James Gandolfini, sly and poignant in his final role) bar has been robbed while it’s being used as a ‘drop’ – a temporary bank for dirty money – and Bob must smooth things over with the Chechen mob, as well as with a shrewd police detective (John Ortiz) who recognises Bob from church and wonders why he never takes communion. But when Nadia’s no-good ex-boyfriend Eric Deeds (Rust and Bone’s Matthias Schoenaerts) claims Bob’s dog is really his, it’s the final straw.
The Drop isn’t the only movie to humanise a tough guy character with a lovable canine. The trust and loyalty of dogs allows otherwise stoic, amoral men of action to explore their capacity for care and tenderness. Movie characters who mistreat dogs are clearly marked as the bad guys, while characters who treat them kindly are heroes.
It’s the incongruity between toughness and tenderness that makes these man-dog relationships so appealing. And because movies often suggest that dogs intuitively seek goodness and reject evil, a man who dotes on his dog can’t be all bad, even if he is a cold-blooded killer.
Here are nine of cinema’s best tough guy dog-lovers. (And if you need to know if the dog dies before you commit to the film, check here…)
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Words by Mel Campbell.