The Drop (2014) * * *

 



Directed by:  Michael Roskam

Starring:  Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, Noomi Rapace, John Ortiz

I enjoyed The Drop despite the fact its main character is malleable and undefined.    Is he smart?  Dumb?   A killer?   An observant bystander?    He is all of those things and none of those things.    He is whatever the script needs him to be at that time.    The Drop is a crafty piece of film noir for the most part despite its faults.    The performances, including Gandolfini's final screen performance, are top-notch.    They create flawed, desperate people.    What are they desperate for?   Love, money, or perhaps both.

The Drop takes place in Brooklyn, where bars sometimes function as "drops" for Chechen mob money.    The mob collects their money at closing and then the next night another bar handles the money.    Bob (Hardy) is the bartender at Cousin Marv's, a small bar once owned by Marv (Gandolfini), but now in the hands of Chechens.    One night the bar is robbed of its $5,000 till and the mobsters want their money back.    Bob and Marv can't give too many details on the masked thieves, although Bob helpfully tells the police that one had a stopped watch on his wrist.     For reasons explained later, Marv isn't happy with Bob for telling the police that piece of information.

Bob stays quiet and keeps his head down.    He goes to mass, but doesn't take communion, which is noted by the detective on the robbery case who has seen him there every day at 8am.    He stumbles across an abused dog in a woman's trash and soon adopts the dog and falls for the woman (Rapace), a waitress with issues of her own.     Then, there is the business of the missing $5,000.     Who stole it and who knows more than he or she is letting on?    Marv has his own issues, including a father on life support whose care is sucking him dry financially.    Gandolfini proves what a versatile actor he was.    His Marv is weary and desperate.    He, like Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront, was once a contender.    "I used to be respected.    I used to be feared," he tells Bob.    Now, he is under the thumb of the mob who took over his bar as repayment for his gambling debts.   

As if all of this weren't enough, there is a lingering missing persons case on a man last seen at Cousin Marv's before his disappearance.    All of this links together without seeming gratuitous.    Naturally, Bob and Marv are more involved than suspected.    Hardy is able to keep up with Bob's ever-changing persona, quite a feat here.    At first, I thought Bob was supposed to a nitwit bartender.    He reveals his smarts later, but it doesn't mesh with what we saw earlier.

The Drop was written and directed with the word "gritty" in mind.   Its characters and the world they inhabit is seedy and cold.    The film takes place right around Christmas and the events culminate on Superbowl Sunday, but this Brooklyn seems colder, more desolate, and lonely.    The characters plod through life as if it were a duty rather than a pleasure.    We begin to wonder if all of the money in the world would change that.