Review #861: 'The Drop' (2014)

Based on Dennis Lehane's short story Animal Rescue, and re-locating the action from the author's beloved Boston to the chilly streets of Brooklyn, The Drop is a disappointingly familiar film that shows a lot of promise in its build-up, but one that will most likely be best remembered for being the last screen performance of James Gandolfini. While the movie is hardly a fitting swansong to the actor's tragically short career, there is promise for future generations in the performance of lead Tom Hardy, who plays his deceptively dim bartender with an extremely subtle complexity, only hinting at the real man who lies beneath his shuffled walk and soft voice.

Formerly respected criminal 'Cousin' Marv (Gandolfini) now spends his time behind the scenes at his eponymous bar, while his actual cousin Bob (Hardy) pours the drinks and keep the regulars in high spirits. The bar is a convenient locale for local gangsters to lay their 'drops' - small amounts of cash that are locked in a safe ready for whoever is destined to collect it. When the bar is robbed by masked gunmen, the efficient Chechen mobsters who run the operation are suspicious and demand that Marv and Bob locate their money. So far, so relatively formulaic - 2012's rather disappointing Killing Them Softly covered similar ground.

The Drop is at its best when it hints at these characters' shady pasts and real character - traits these men may have embraced in their past, but have since been suppressed or subdued by new powers. The performances are magnificent all round, and special mention must go to Matthias Schoenaerts, who proves a truly menacing presence as Eric Deeds, the lonesome brute who comes into the picture after Bob finds a beaten puppy in the rubbish bin of Nadia (Noomi Rapace), Eric's former girlfriend. Bob and Nadia form a relationship, possibly out of mutual feelings of disenchantment or perhaps because they both simply care for the animal. Deeds is an intimidating and unnerving manipulator, and Schoenaerts is part of a trio of non-American actors playing American roles astonishingly well here - he's Belgian, Hardy is English, and Rapace is Swedish.

The multiple plot threats naturally lead to a suitably bloody finale, where we learn what really makes these people tick and operate with such efficiency. But for all it's stylish direction and vibrant screenplay by Lehane himself, a disappointingly cliched final scene betrays much of what came before. Up to this point, it is an interesting study of coming to terms with being the kind of man you wish you weren't. To offer salvation to a character who has just accepted this very thing is a simplistic and easy path to take, especially when the build-up is bolstered by an observant eye for detail and thick layer of cynicism, painting it's Winter greys broadly. This contradiction makes the film quite ordinary, when it could have been a compelling study of the insecurity of thugs and the circle of violence that surrounds them.


Directed by: Michaël R. Roskam
Starring: Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, Noomi Rapace, Matthias Schoenaerts, John Ortiz
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie