“The Drop” is one of those strong, character-driven crime dramas that don’t come along too often but, when they do and they’re done well, are worth the wait. Anchored in a great performance by Tom Hardy and written by Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River”, “Gone Baby Gone”), who knows how to fill an urban neighborhood’s microcosm of crime with sketchy characters that have dark pasts and hidden agendas, “The Drop” quenches the thirst and ends the drought experienced by fans of this type of movie since 2011’s “Drive” with Ryan Gosling was released.
The film centers around Cousin Marv’s, a Brooklyn neighborhood bar owned by the Chechen mob and used as an occasional “drop” for the collection of envelopes of cash produced through various illicit activities. Cousin Marv’s is just one of several bars owned by the Chechens and these bars serve as random “drops” for their cash to safe house their money and avoid someone getting wise to where their money is holed up and robbing their take. On a selected night, a random bar is chosen and the cash is delivered to that bar and handed to the bartender who slips the money into a time-release safe that is collected later that night by the Chechens- even the people working the bar can’t open the safe, assuring the Chechens that their money is safe.
The bartender at Cousin Marv’s is Bob (Hardy), a quiet yet amiable man who habitually gives free rounds of drinks to patrons much to the chagrin of his actual cousin and the bar’s namesake Marv (James Gandolfini), who once owned the bar before needing money and letting the Chechens take over his establishment. One night at closing, two armed and masked men enter and confront Bob and Marv. It’s not a night of a “drop”, but the robbers are still able to steal $5,000. Bob notices one of the men wearing a white-dialed watch during the robbery, and gives this information to the detective investigating the robbery. Marv chastises Bob for giving the police this information and it is here that “The Drop” informs the audience that they have just entered into an ever-tightening circle within a den of thieves, where police involvement is frowned upon and things are handled internally.
After the robbery, the Chechens appear and tell Marv that he is responsible for the $5,000 that was taken, putting him in a dangerous criminal Catch-22: if Marv can’t produce the $5,000, the Chechens will hurt him; if he does produce the money, the Chechens will think he was in on the robbery and hurt him anyway. Soon after, Bob finds a trash bag hanging on a chain link fence behind the bar and the bag contains the missing $5,000. However, the bag also contains a bloodied, severed arm- the arm sporting a white-dialed watch.
So what’s really going on? It’s situations like these and their inherent mysteries that are the real joy of a movie like “The Drop.” As a voice-over explains at the beginning of the film, there are things happening beneath the surface of the common things we see everyday- things we don’t notice. Yet, what lies beneath these familiar surroundings is a black undercurrent that threatens those in its path with a sink-or-swim proposition and, regardless of how they conduct themselves; they’re going to get wet. No one is ever safe, and you really don’t know what the other guy is thinking or what they’re really up to.
In that vein, it’s Tom Hardy’s performance as Bob that galvanizes “The Drop.” With his stiff, lumbering gait and simple language, Hardy presents Bob as an unassuming cog in the criminal machine. However, in his interactions with the various characters he encounters, we see Bob avert his eyes and glance furtively around the ground when he’s spoken to- the audience never quite being sure whether Bob is trying to process all of the information he’s being given or whether he’s actually using this information to form a plan and calculate his next step. It’s this tricky duality in Bob’s character that Hardy really pulls off. The mannerisms, speech and physicality Hardy employs in his portrayal of Bob reminded me a lot of Sylvester Stallone’s performance in “Rocky” and I wouldn’t be surprised if Hardy studied Stallone’s portrayal of Rocky Balboa in preparing for his role as Bob- after all, before Rocky became heavyweight champion, he was a professional leg breaker for a local Philly loan shark. Like Rocky, there is an underlying quest for redemption as well as survival that allows Hardy to deftly blur the line between them and add to the enigma he creates in Bob’s character.
As the mysteries within the “The Drop” are revealed, so are the motives within its main character. As with the aforementioned “Drive” or even a movie like “Thief” with James Caan, we come to care about the protagonist no matter how jaded their circumstances have made them. The more we learn about them, the more we wonder how they’ll handle or extricate themselves from the film’s inevitable climactic finale.
Again, these character-driven crime dramas don’t come around that often. If this type of movie is your cup of tea, that cup of tea is filled with whisky and you can get it by grabbing a stool at Cousin Marv’s.