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.