It isn’t surprising to discover that The Drop is based on a novel. This tale of a bartender, his manager and the dirty money they’re relieved of by two-bit local crooks and the desperation that sets in around them is a story short on incident and long on detail. In adapting his own work for the big screen, novelist/first-time screenwriter Dennis Lehane fills out the periphery of this contained tale with details and local flavor (set in Brooklyn) that help flesh out what could’ve proven overly sparse otherwise. Tom Hardy plays the bartender, Bob Saginowski, a gentle giant of a man in the service of bar manager Marv (James Gandolfini), once owner of the establishment who now answers to the Chechen mobsters that launder their ill-gotten money through the establishment. Two incidents spur the film forward – the first, Bob’s discovery of an abused pit bull in a trash can outside of the home of Nadia (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s Noomi Rapace) that allows for a gentle relationship to develop between all three and secondly, a robbery of their establishment by a couple of two bit hoods. The Chechens are insistent that their money be returned to them, with a casual nature that is unsettling given the violence they prove capable of inflicting. Bob learns that both Nadia and the pit bull were once considered the property of local lunatic Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts), a man with an unsettling habit of appearing in places he’s not been invited. The screws slowly turn on both Bob and Marv, leading both men to take matters into their own hands lest their respective situations spiral completely out of their control.
There’s a good chance this film will primarily be remembered historically as the final completed work of James Gandolfini, and as such it’s a solid final way to remember this gifted performer. There’s an impotent rage to his bar manager that harkens to some of his strongest previous work, a desperate groping for respect and status in a world that is quickly passing him by. But even as nice as it is to be given this last chance to enjoy Gandolfini on the big screen, The Drop is primarily a showcase for the incredible work of Tom Hardy. Whether he’s playing the most violent prisoner in Britain’s jail system or fighting Batman in a sleep apnea mask with the voice of a cartoon walrus, Hardy has always demanded full attention when on screen, and the role he’s been given here is particularly juicy. Bob Saginowski slowly reveals himself to us, spending long stretches of the film roiling away internally with even the way he physically inhabits space giving the sense that he’s collapsing in upon himself.
In a lesser movie, once his character is fully revealed in the film’s climatic moments, it would operate as a bit of gimmickry that gave the film a one-and-done quality, but Hardy is so stellar in his role here that it instead plays as the culmination of the sunken posture and carefully chosen words that had all led up to this. It’s stunning work and a reminder that Hardy must be in the conversation when we discuss the best young actors of this generation. Schoenaerts and Rapace also should be mentioned here, although their characters operate like moons around the hulking planet that is Hardy, making the most of their lesser-formed characters.
Director Michaël R. Roskam follows up his Oscar-nominated Bullhead with understated work here. He doesn’t overstate the case visually at any point, allowing his camera to linger on the actors and their performances and allow the nuance they bring to the characters to do the heavy lifting. That said, his work isn’t so staid that he foregoes the opportunity to indulge in some memorably-apt imagery, like blood-caked money being washed in an industrial sink as we watch the crimson-tinted water slowly circle the drain. Like the performers and story this image is in support of, it’s a quiet testament to the power that can be created when an entire cast and crew decide in unison that they needn’t play to the rafters.
