The Drop
The Drop had me at Tom Hardy and a puppy. And even without the puppy, there’s James Gandolfini in his final role, so for me, this was always going to be a win. But with Bullhead director Michaël R Roskam on board, it promised to be a bit more than a standard mobsters in Brooklyn flick.
Hardy plays Bob Saganowski, a bartender working for his cousin Marv (Gandolfini) in a dive bar which intermittently hosts ‘the drop’ ie collects the Chechen mob’s cash. Marv is a bit like Tony Soprano’s dim cousin, using even dimmer henchmen to get one over on the bosses he lost the bar to after his gambling debts got out of hand. That’s never going to go well, right? Bob sensibly keeps out of the scheming, he’s the quiet, steady one – marked out as a good guy from the beginning when he rescues a puppy from Nadia’s (Noomi Rapace) garbage can. When the bar is raided and the owners seem convinced it’s an inside job, things quickly get out of hand, putting Bob, his puppy and his potential romance with Nadia at risk.
Gandolfini is as good as you expect as Marv, a desperate, lumbering man who knows he’s onto a loser but can’t quite see past the chance of a big payday. And as Bob, Hardy brings a more than passable Brooklyn accent and a solid presence, he’s the emotional heart of the film and we need to believe in him despite a creeping sense that he might have his own dark secrets. At times it seems like the film is happening around him, while he waits to see how the next load of shit will land before getting back to his day job.
This is a well-paced, solid thriller from Roskam, wholly enjoyable and with enough twists and turns to keep you gripped throughout. Of course it’s the potential for puppy peril that keeps you on the edge of your seat, but it’s the performances that lift The Drop into something special: with Hardy in impressive form and the wonderful Gandolfini at his best, it’s definitely worth a look.
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