The Drop

If there’s one thing guar­an­teed to get us in the hol­i­day spir­it, it’s a time-hon­oured tale of bad men and mean streets. Par­tic­u­lar­ly a Christ­mas-set crime dra­ma boast­ing a top-draw­er James Gan­dolfi­ni per­for­mance, sad­ly his last com­mit­ted to film. In The Drop, a loose adap­ta­tion of the Den­nis Lehane short sto­ry ​‘Ani­mal Res­cue’, Gan­dolfi­ni plays surly cousin Marv, who togeth­er with Tom Hardy’s ret­i­cent lunkhead, Bob, runs a ​“drop bar” – so called because it’s where var­i­ous local crim­i­nals stash their dirty loot – in one of Brooklyn’s tough­est neighbourhoods.

When a masked gang oppor­tune­ly holds up the bar, Marv must answer to the Chechen drug lords whose mon­ey he’s sup­posed to be safe­guard­ing. As you can prob­a­bly guess, they’re not about to cut him any slack. Mean­while Bob builds up a casu­al rap­port with a woman named Nadia (Noo­mi Rapace), whom he meets after find­ing an aban­doned pup­py in a bin out­side her house. For a time it seems the spark between them might lead to some­thing more, but this is not your typ­i­cal fairy tale of New York.

Before long Nadia’s thug­gish ex Eric (Matthias Schoe­naerts) arrives on the scene, first approach­ing Bob in a park with an insin­cere cor­dial­i­ty that would unnerve any vig­i­lant dog own­er, and lat­er pay­ing Nadia an unso­cia­ble vis­it. Not one to be eas­i­ly intim­i­dat­ed, Bob watch­es intent­ly over Nadia and his adorable mutt, Roc­co, while attempt­ing to keep John Ortiz’s snoop­ing detec­tive off his back. If Bob’s appar­ent self­less­ness and pro­tec­tive instincts mean we quick­ly warm to him, how­ev­er, a gra­tu­itous third act twist com­plete­ly destroys the emo­tion­al bridge that direc­tor Michaël R Roskam has built between his char­ac­ter and the audience.

The fact that Bob is posi­tioned ear­ly on as the only char­ac­ter worth invest­ing in (Rapace is regret­tably restrict­ed to play­ing the vague love inter­est) means that the afore­men­tioned rev­e­la­tion leaves a bit­ter taste in the mouth. Gan­dolfi­ni and Schoe­naerts, team­ing up with his Bull­head direc­tor for a third time, are both excel­lent here. Yet their mus­cu­lar per­for­mances are ulti­mate­ly under­mined by the film’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with Hardy, who rel­ish­es anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate the brood­ing inten­si­ty that’s made him Hollywood’s go-to guy when it comes to play­ing deeply trou­bled protagonists.

You sense Roskam is try­ing to evoke Ryan Gosling’s name­less wheel­man from Dri­ve here, but the only notable point of com­par­i­son between these two com­plex anti­heroes is that Hardy hap­pens to be sport­ing this season’s must-have jacket.