Short Round: The Drop (2014) ****/*****
The Drop, which is the latest film from Bullhead director Michaël R. Roskam, works on several levels. On its surface it’s most obviously a street-level crime drama, and it tells a tale with enough twists and turns and rampant corruption to be effective as that, but it also manages to get deep enough into the personal lives and motivations of its players to work as a sort of working class character study too; plus it puts enough focus on the dramatization of the adopting of a puppy by a sad sack bartender to be a fairly effective boy-and-his-dog story as well. Mostly though, what it really succeeds at is being a showcase for a handful of really talented actors to put on a handful of really strong performances.
The film stars James Gandolfini and Tom Hardy as the manager and bartender of a local watering hole that’s owned by a ruthless gangster who uses it as a way of collecting and moving money that he acquires through various illegal gambling ventures. Gandolfini and Hardy’s characters are basically given the tasks of keeping up the bars’ legitimate appearance, protecting the money in their care, and keeping their mouths shut about everything that’s going down. What seems to be a regular routine for them gets interrupted after a late night robbery raises questions about everyone’s loyalty, however. Does the crime have anything to do with Gandolfini’s resentment over being usurped as the local tough guy by the foreign invaders who are now his bosses? Maybe it somehow involves the local hood who keeps claiming that the dog Hardy recently adopted is his own? Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that the status quo has been interrupted, and before the end credits roll, somebody is going to have to die.
Gandolfini and Hardy get the bulk of the focus here, and they prove to be really effective in their roles, both when paired together and when paired with supporting players. Gandolfini is basically using what brought him to the table — that undercurrent of aggression that’s clearly stemming from a place of insecurity thing that he used so often as Tony Soprano — so it should come as no surprise that he appears completely comfortable in his role. Hardy is showing a bit more vulnerability than we’ve seen from him before though, and he’s still really authentic, even when working out of his comfort zone. His bartender character wilts like a flower in the face of violence, he looks at the ground and shuffles his feet in the face of social interaction, often muttering to himself afterward; but, through it all, Hardy is able to keep enough of a resolve burning in his eyes that you never write him off as a cowardly or unrelatable protagonist. It’s akin to those early scenes in Rocky, where we watch Sylvester Stallone interacting with his lower-class neighborhood and working as a low-level thug, but stretched out for an entire movie, and it’s pretty dang entertaining. Throw in Noomi Rapace resonating as a live-wire abuse victim and Matthias Schoenaerts intimidating as a Randy Savage-esque street tough who seems like he could explode into violence at any minute, and The Drop is a movie that’s well worth checking out just based on its acting alone.
