A viewing of The Drop prompted a repeat examination of Tom Hardy’s “one man” film from earlier this year: the unique and compelling Locke. Taken in tandem, it’s hard to think of two recent performances that have displayed such a stunning array of acting chops. In The Drop, Hardy plays Bob Saginowski, a skittish, deliberate, and perhaps slow-witted bartender who seems out of place working for his cousin Marv (James Gandolfino in his last film role), a small-time hood who manages a bar he once owned but forfeited to some nasty Chechen mobsters. Bob is a character that is polar opposite in temperament from the confident lead in Locke who goes through that film impressively dealing with a series of stressful phone calls while driving in his car. What they have in common is an admirable earnestness, an at times painful honesty. With this film, Locke, and Lawless, where he played the unforgettable Forrest Bondurant, you get the idea Hardy’s versatility knows no bounds.
Scripted by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) and based on his story Animal Rescue, The Drop won’t remind you of Martin Scorsese’s ludicrous misfire of Lehane’s Shutter Island, but it’s far from flawless. An air of artifice occasionally besets the film but it builds a nice head of steam as it works its way toward a finish that jells almost perfectly. What’s fun along the way is watching the British Hardy not only take on a character from working class Brooklyn, but define him in such a way that his dead serious eccentricity both amuses and gets under our skin. His scenes with Gandolfino, the consummate pro, impart The Drop with an edgy, mostly plausible impetus. Noomi Rapace, from the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, portrays Bob’s equally demure counterpart, Nadia. They meet when Bob rescues an injured dog from her trash bin. He names the dog Rocco, and upon meeting Bob after noticing him going through her trash, she demands his drivers license so she can protectively send copies of it to several of her friends. What could have been a dangerously ill-begotten start to a film manages to get saved by Hardy’s presence. He repeatedly dodges cliches from the screenplay with an agile finesse. As does Gandolfini, who died in 2013 at 51. It’s a little eerie that one of his last lines in his last film he utters the phrase, “I’m not feeling well.”
Redolent of many other crime dramas, The Drop never fully rises above its many predecessors. However, it contains more than enough interesting and surprising touches to satisfy even viewers who feel jaded with the genre. The two leads, especially Hardy, are largely responsible for squeezing every last drop of suspense out of the screenplay. Also not shabby are strong supporting performances by John Ortiz as a smily and sarcastic investigating detective, Matthias Schoenaerts as a psycho who tries to reclaim Bob’s newfound dog, and Ann Dowd (see her in Compliance) as Marv’s sister, who sadly, seems to be the only one in Marv’s world who is not a hood of some sort. Marv casts her off emotionally like so many empty beer bottles from his bar. Incidentally, The Drop refers to the hidden nature of Marv’s shot-and-beer joint: it’s a destination for dirty money to be delivered and store for future pick-up. Throughout the film it’s apparent this ostensibly dim-witted bartender is going to transform in some perverse way. Have fun trying to guess what’s coming.