The trailer for The Drop, featuring James Gandolfini's final film role, has been released. The film stars Gandolfini opposite Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace, in a crime drama centered around Brooklyn's gangster underworld; Gandolfini plays the bar-owning cousin to Hardy's bartender, allowing 'drops' of criminal cash to go on at their premises, but a robbery upsets the fine balance of their lives.

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Gandolfini died of a heart attack in June last year. He is most celebrated for his portrayal of Tony Soprano in long-running Mafia drama The Sopranos, seen by many as one of the first and finest examples of modern long-form TV drama – its influence can be seen in the likes of Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones.

As well as the brutish gangster roles, Gandolfini also showed a gift for comedy in Armando Iannucci's comedy In The Loop and Enough Said, a film from Nicole Holofcener that was posthumously released last year. "He came to it with a seriousness, but he was a clown in the best way," Holofcener said of his performance. "A crazy, foolish clown that we all fell in love with".

The Drop is written by Dennis Lehane, whose novels Shutter Island, Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone have all been adapted for the screen, and who has written episodes of Boardwalk Empire and The Wire. Its director Michaël R. Roskam meanwhile impressed with his debut feature Bullhead, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film – it starred Matthias Schoenaerts as a steroid-jacked Belgian farmer who, as with the characters in The Drop, becomes embroiled in criminality.