Hardy IS Brando.
The Drop
Grade: B+
Director: Michael R. Roskam (Bullhead)
Screenplay: Dennis Lehane from his short story, Animal Rescue
Cast: Tom Hardy (Locke), Noomi Rapace ( The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
Rating: R
Runtime: 106 min.
by John DeSando
“I had something once. I was respected. I was FEARED.” Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini in his final performance)
Writer Dennis Lehane knows his neighborhoods, evidenced by his Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River. He’s back again but in Brooklyn, not Boston, in The Drop. It’s a small movie with some big actors (Tom Hardy as Bob, NoomiRapace as Nadia, and the late James Gandolfini as Cousin Marv) in a small-time noirish story that has been told many times before: mean streets, laconic heroes, troublesome women, secrets. It’s acting that keeps it from being an imitation.
Bob tends bar in Cousin Marv’s, which now and then can be a “drop,” a designated place on a night when sports-betting money can be deposited and moved for laundering. The short story was called Animal Rescue, an apt title because Bob finds an abused dog , precipitating his connection with Nadia and furthers peripheral action. In reality, it’s something for Bob to love, to get him out of himself.
Bob holds tightly to much in both the present and the past. Hardy is a master at revealing little somethings as the camera lovingly holds on to him in close ups. Just as in his brilliant solo act in Locke, Hardy can tell us everything through facial expression and nuanced voice, an artfully minimalist performance that might remind you of Brando without the extreme mumbling.
For those who like their screen romances spare and chaste, this one between Bob and Nadia is a classic of restraint. Director Michael R. Roskam and Lehane want to emphasize the hoodlum motif without mixing in clichéd boy meets girl stuff, and they succeed. The emphasis remains throughout on the claustrophobic bar and the occasional release to the outside, always looping back to Marv’s.
For those who like their stories small and their actors big in a world Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon) and EliaKazan (On the Waterfront) would love, see The Drop.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
