The Drop

The Drop is a tight, low-key crime thriller based on a short story by Dennis Lehane, inhabiting the same kind of sad, desperate world he created in Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and the episodes he wrote of The Wire. Lehane also wrote the screenplay for The Drop and the Brooklyn he paints is a noir Brooklyn, a Brooklyn of dread and melancholy.

Finding an abandoned, maliciously hurt, whining puppy bulldog in a trash can leads Bob to meeting Nadia (Noomi Rapace in one of her better recent roles; it was almost painful to see her in a useless part in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows). The meeting with this fellow sad, reserved soul is the beginning of an intricate web of connections Bob is inexorably drawn into. Without revealing plot twists, it’s enough to say the core of the film is the tension between the person Bob wants to be, who he was and who he is. That tension is made palpable and arresting by Hardy and all the supporting talents.

From Band of Brothers in 2001 through The Dark Knight Rises, Tom Hardy has proved to be one of the most promising actors working and he so loses himself here in the role of Bob Saginowski that I forgot I was watching Tom Hardy: “There are some sins that you commit that you can’t come back from — you know, no matter how hard you try. You just can’t. It’s like the devil is waiting for your body to quit, because he knows — he knows — that he already owns your soul … And then I think maybe there’s no devil. You die. And God, He says, ‘Nah-nah! You can’t come in. You have to leave now. You have to leave and go away and you have to be alone. You have to be alone forever.'” ~Tom Hardy as Bob Saginowski, from The DropI was watching Bob. Bob works at a “drop bar,” one of a series of local bars in which mob earnings are temporarily stored for a night. The bar was years ago owned by his cousin Marv, played by James Gandolfini in his last role, but is now owned by a ruthless Chechen mob.

It’s fitting that Gandolfini’s last role was in a fine crime drama, as he first appeared in low budget crime films years before the debut of HBO’s The Sopranos. He acquits himself well here; his Marv, a man whose power was taken from him years ago, is conniving, weary, funny, smart, and not to be trusted.

Also playing fine supporting roles: Juan Ortiz as a relentlessly inquisitive detective and fellow congregant with Bob at the local Catholic church; Michael Aronov as the creepy representative of the Chechen mob, and especially Matthias Schoenaerts as Eric Deeds, Nadia’s former, abusive boyfriend and the catalyst of the film’s violent resolution.

The Drop is director Michaël R. Roskam’s first American film (his earlier, critically lauded Bullhead — 2011, Belgium — also starred Matthias Schoenaerts). While a blue and brown color palette has become a clichéd signifier for seriousness in recent films, the choice works here, giving the neon red signs of the bar a brightness which would otherwise be lost. Roskam is a careful, meticulous director, unerring in his compositions and pacing. The Drop is a slow-simmering, contemplative movie. It may be too slow for some. It succeeds, though, in conveying a sense of menace such that just seeing Bob walking down the street conjurs a feeling of dread. It’s a case study of how to make an intimate, claustrophobic crime noir on a relatively low budget, and fans of Lehane’s work will want to give it a chance.

—Michael R. Neno, 2014 Sep 24