The Drop will most likely be remembered as James Gandolfini’s final movie role. Released more than a year after his death, the film is something of a surreal experience – and a sad one, considering the calibre of Gandolfini’s performance. While the actor’s role in the film may be its claim to fame to some extent, even beyond this, The Drop is a gripping watch.
The film comes from director Michaël R. Roskam, whose film Bullhead was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 2011. Written by the legendary Dennis Lehane of Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River fame, The Drop tells the story of Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) and cousin Marv (Gandolfini), who run a bar in downtown Brooklyn. When their bar is robbed, Bob and Marv find themselves mixed up in the underbelly of their town, and at odds with the gangsters who own the bar.
There are a lot of converging storylines in The Drop, which occasionally interact jarringly. However, none of these storylines go to waste, and rather than confusing the viewer, the complexity of the plot instead helps to add further intrigue.
The casting of The Drop, while sometimes puzzling (i.e. uber-British Hardy playing a native Brooklynite), is spot on, and there are no disappointing performances. Hardy absolutely kills it as nice-guy bartender Bob, and the amount of shots of him holding a tiny puppy is overwhelmingly awesome. Noomi Rapace is fantastic in the role of Nadia, Bob’s potential love interest, and Matthias Schoenaerts is flawless, as per usual. Gandolfini is well placed within this cast, and his performance is only disappointing in its finality.
4/5 stars
The Drop opens in cinemas Thursday November 13.
