The Drop is a crime/drama film which stars Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini and Matthias Schoenaerts. It comes directed by Michaël R. Roskam and the screenplay is from Dennis Lehane who happened to work on Shutter Island (2010).
The Drop Trailer
The Drop Review
The Drop’s plot is centered around Bob who is played by Tom Hardy. Bob is barman who is struggling to make a living in a dangerous neighbourhood filled with criminals and gangsters. Unfortunately one day his bar is robbed, but his bar is no ordinary bar, it’s a “drop bar”. The drop bar is basically a place where gangsters drop their money, I guess to make payments to other gangsters which is sort of like when you go pay your bills at the post office, but well criminals can’t really do that, so they have this “drop bar”.
Anyway the drop bar is robbed and the gangster’s show up which happen to be Chechen and they want their money! Bob and cousin Marv (James Gandolfini) who work the bar together need to get the money back or face some very dangerous and life threatening repercussions.
I quite liked this movie because while the plot is kind of a bit small and not much goes on with it, it does pay a lot of attention to characterisation. Tom Hardy’s Bob is this sociopath type of character who has almost no emotion or feeling for anything and that makes him very hard to judge at times because you can’t figure out if he’s really dangerous or not. Bob during the film gets a new dog and has no idea how to care for such a thing because he just doesn’t seem to have the emotional capacity for it and needs a lot of help. While James Gandolfini’s character of cousin Marv is struggling, he wants to be respected and return to the level of respect he once had but lost “I had something once. I was respected. I was feared” he would say and he wants to be that way again I think. Everyone in the movie is just trying to make and make something of themselves but their past and the world they live in just won’t allow them and we learn all about that as we watch The Drop and it’s all very interesting.
The town in which the characters all live and the world that Michaël R. Roskam created here and took us to all feels very realistic and I felt that the film did take me there in a way and it kept me interested in what was going on. The pacing and the tone of The Drop is a bit slow though and it’s not an action film, it’s drama and even though much of the film is centered around a dog, it’s not anything like John Wick. Characters seem to talk just a little bit too slow and that could be off putting for some people.
I don’t think The Drop is a film for everyone but it’s something that many could still enjoy, I mean I enjoyed it but I felt that if I had a phone with me or if I was watching at home on TV, any type of small distraction might have taken me completely away from watching.
But The Drop is somehow good and I think it’s wholly due to some pretty good characterisation and also some fairly good acting and directing. Actors who had smaller roles such Noomi Rapace who played Nadia, had a character that was quite developed by the end of the film and we do get to learn about not only her but other characters to. Villains such as Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts) are well fleshed out and are shown be something dangerous and the director does well in creating tension in the film when needed.
Not everyone is fantastic though, the Chechen villains aren’t really that great and detective Torres (John Ortiz) is a bit bland and boring on screen as the policeman trying to investigate the initial robbery. But the performances by Tom Hardy and James Ganfolfini more than make up for it and their characters are quite interesting to see on screen.
Overall the The Drop is quite good and it’s not an easy to predict film which is nice. The acting and directing is great and I really liked the world that film was set up in, everyone is struggling and everyone is desperate in The Drop and that creates some dangerous situations for characters to deal with. The attention to detail with certain characters is spot on and I really like when that is taken care of in a film. It only may not appeal to some people who may find it a bit slow but really it’s a good film and Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini and Noomi Rapace all put in some solid performances.
