Hello, true cinephiles! Welcome back to another review from relor, Lord of Rage and Revenge, who will smite any bad film He find in His path with a +3 Broadsword of Holy Fire!
Shall The Drop, with Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini, suffer His punishment?
The Drop is a crime film. It follows the story of Bob Saginowski and his cousin, who run a bar owned by the Eastern Europe Mafia. The bar is one of many in a network of business the Mafia uses for storing and moving dirty money which cannot be deposited in the bank. The arrangement works fine for the barmen until somebody sets a plan in motion to steal the Mob's money the bar is storing, and Bob, whose only ambition in life is tending the bar and avoiding trouble, sees himself pressured by his crime lords to get the issue fixed.
Meanwhile, Bob adopts a Pit Bull puppy he finds abbandoned in a trashcan, but this eventually only plunges him in a world of problems, because the local tough guy, a psychotic thug known for some high profile killings in the neighbourhood, starts extorting Bob, threatening him to kill the puppy should he not be paid.
Somehow, the writers manage to connect both plots in such a way that they just flow with the movie and reach joint closure by the end of the film. I think this is a meaningful feat. The Mafia plot and the Puppy plot both happen in parallel but you don't ever feel like you are watching two plots unfold.
relor's might usually strikes films that attempt to glorify the neighbourhood ganstah' lifestyle, because they are usually very cheesy and very bad at it. The Drop, however, sets atmosphere the right way. You can tell the bar is one in a working neighbourhood. They really manage to convey the idea that the bar it is the sort of corner business stevedors and football fans visit. It has a very down to Earth feeling, and the bar comes across as a realistic protrayal of a property of an organized criminal gang without the need of having black ganstah's playing basketball and listening to hip-hop in front of it.
At that, I must commend Michael Aronov for his portrayal of Chovka, the Mafia's visible face in the movie. He plays the role of a laid back business man who is tending his family's business in a dispassionate way. However, every time he shows up in screen, you cannot but feel that behind his easy going personality and his charming manners there's a monster, waiting for his turn to pop up and sink some sucker in the bay.
In fact, performances are A grade in general. Matthias Schoenaerts delivers a down to Earth sense of danger as a mentally ill thug who is obsessed with Bob's puppy. Gandolfiny, as Bob's cousin, made of this film his last role ever before his premature demise, and plays a bitter man who hates the fact he is a pawn for the Mafia. Still, he is a scumbag himself and the audience gets to love to hate him.
The big prize, however, goes to Tom Hardy. His role as Bob is just golden, but the audience will only realize how much of an acting genius Tom is when they watch the movie whole, see the pieces of the puzzle fall in place, and realize just how our hero's mind actually works inside. If Oscar prizes were worth for anything other than wipping your ass with them nowadays, I'd say this guy deserved one for this movie alone. He plays his character as if he was a
highly functional autist. You can tell he is not "right" despite the fact he does not do anything that may not become a normal person. He just feels "off" for some reason. I love that effect, but you get only to appreciate it in full at the movie's climax.
In clonclusion, a likable cast with awesome performances rooted on realistic, human street life, with characters you care about - even if you are like
relor and hate humans, you will love the puppy! - makes for a film worth watching.
And thus, relor shall keep searching for bad films whose heart to burn in the eternal fires of His Hell, because The Drop is, sadly, quite a good film.
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