The Drop (2014)

A solid, somewhat slow but never tedious look inside some small time crooks who own a bar in the City. This one is a drop for payments in a booking racket, and the bar owner (James Gandolfini) sort of goes along because he has no choice. The bartender (Tom Hardy) is far more ambiguous, and he makes the movie click. Add Noomi Rapace whose small role fills in a big gap rather well and you have the core of the cast, all excellent.

There is no attempt at the grandiose here, despite all the history and slightly exaggerated characters involved (mostly bad ones). And that's the beauty of the movie, which manages not just realism but a welcome tenderness amidst all the darkness and bad intentions. The one bright spot is, tragically, Gandolfini, who manages to be really funny even as he about to do terrible things. Hardy is just the opposite, showing a huge heart with utter sobriety even as he, too, is going to do terrible things.

Whether this quite rises above the many movies that dive into this kind of world I don't know, but I thoroughly enjoyed it even when it seemed to get slow. It doesn't plod, but it has no urgency, either. There are some clichés that might have been avoided (the attitude of the bad guys) and some violence that seemed a bit in your face, but it balances out, too. Rapace is not given enough to do—this is a man's movie, another one —but she is tough and smart in necessary ways.

Well filmed, smartly done, I'd give this a look.

I grew up with movies about the gangsters and the street and the tough guys, when everything is about low tech and experience and who you know. It was good in the 70s, but most movies like that now seem terribly obsolete. Not so The Drop. You actually believe what happens in the film is real, the characters are well fleshed out, the acting great, the direction very good.

The plot itself is not something I want to talk about, let me just say that people never really learn not to hurt dogs, do they? Tom Hardy plays again the sturdy, no bullshit, silent guy. Gandolfini, in his last movie before passing away, is the perfect old wannabe mobster. Rapace's role is nothing much, but at least she does well; I haven't seen her in anything decent since Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.

Bottom line: the tired mobster genre rarely yields original and worthy films, but in this case it did. The Drop is more about the characters and the tense low key feel of potential violence. Reminded me of A History of Violence, a little bit, another decent gangster movie.

If you didn't have Tom Hardy on your radar up to this movie, you surely will have him on it after watching this. There is another stellar performance from James Gandolfini, whom regrettably we lost too early, but this is Hardys movie through and through. With Noomi making an impact too as the female lead of the piece.

But while I am excited about the movie and others obviously are too, do not expect this to be a fast paced ride that will be exciting in that style. This is understated and subtle and slow burning. If you can dig that, you will experience a great story, with great characters with some neat surprises along the way. The deliveries are on the money (no pun intended)