THE DROP
Starring Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini
Directed by Michaël R. Roskam
Not even Tom Hardy’s brilliantly understated performance and James Gandolfini’s final feature film role can save Michaël R. Roskam’s bland and sometimes languid crime drama The Drop.
The first glaring issue is Dennis Lehane’s surprisingly pedestrian script, which mines too many familiar genre tropes to offer anything memorable. Mild mannered bartender Bob Saginowski (Hardy) and his employer Marv (Gandolfini) find themselves deeply entwined in the local criminal underworld and a police investigation following the robbery of their mutual establishment.
Another problem with The Drop stems from the narrative tangents that branch off from its main plot. Bob finds a whimpering puppy in the trash and soon befriends a mysterious woman with a dark past (Noomi Rapace) who is being followed by a dangerous ex-boyfriend (Matthias Schoenaerts). Meanwhile, a tough talking cop (John Ortiz) is hot on the case of the robbery and takes every opportunity to spout hackneyed dialogue. It all meanders tediously along with no forward momentum and sparse glimpses of tension.
However, most of the acting in the film is top notch. Hardy proves to be one of the most versatile talents working in movies, and Gandolfini, though not as emotionally vulnerable as last year’s wonderful Enough Said, crafts a worthy final role. Rapace is effective, but she’s not given much to do other than look anxious, while Schoenaerts sizzles as an unstable man lurking on the edge of insanity.
This is the supreme folly of The Drop; so much on-screen talent wasted in such a lacklustre film.
