Coastal View News
A “drop bar” is a bar where criminals conveniently drop off
cash from their criminal activities. Each night there is a different drop bar
in Brooklyn, N.Y. People come in, drop of their packages, and then slink off
unnoticed. Then the boss comes in and gets all the cash.
“Cousin Marv’s” is one such bar. The owner is, appropriately
enough, Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini). Marv and his cousin, Bob (Tom Hardy),
run the bar and manage all the cash transactions. Marv is the shrewd
ringleader. Or so it seems. Bob is the meek (and maybe a little slow) bartender
who does Marv’s bidding. Or so it seems.
The usual routine is broken up one night when burglars rob
Cousin Marv’s. This would suck pretty much no matter what. But it really sucks
for Marv and Bob, since the mob bosses still want their cash. This thread
fizzles out pretty quickly, though. What seems to be important is just that we
get a sense of how ruthless and unforgiving (and predictably stereotypical) the
mob bosses are. They don’t care what happened. They just want their money.
Even more tangential than the robbery is a peculiar little
romance. One night when Bob is walking home he hears something jostling around
inside a trashcan in someone’s front yard. He investigates, and finds a beaten,
bloodied puppy dog. Nadia (Noomi Rapace), who lives at this house, hears the
commotion and comes out to see what is going on. She has no idea about the
dog—she did not put it there and does not know who did. But she is just as
concerned about it as Bob. So they form a bond over the dog.
What happens next? Well, there are some scenes where more
robberies are planned. Then some more of Bob, Nadia, and their puppy. Then more
sociopathic mobsters. More planning. More puppy. More mobsters. At some point a
lunatic of a jealous ex-boyfriend/ex-dog owner shows up and mixes things up.
Then more planning. More puppy. More mobsters. And so on.
“The Drop” is a poorly sewn together Frankenstein of a
movie—with one dangling, comical arm longer than the other, ears where there
should be eyes, and alas, no soul animating its heaving, clunky corpse. The
effect is neither scary nor dramatic nor funny nor interesting nor touching nor
compelling. It’s odd, this movie. You get the sense that each of its parts
belong somewhere in a good movie. Take the score, for instance. Its persistent
foreboding tones do a nice job of casting an ominous pall over the whole movie.
But why? A scene where two people are playing with a puppy has no use for the
music from “There Will Be Blood”.
Or consider the acting. Tom Hardy is a gifted actor. And he
is by far the most compelling person in this movie. One wishes he could save
the movie. Perhaps in another version of it—with the right context (and more of
it)—he could. But here Hardy’s character is perplexing, and not in a good way.
At times he seems quiet and dim-witted, but at other times he comes off as
sharp and assertive. His true character never really emerges—it never finds a
place in this script. It would be nice if this could be chalked up to
complexity or mysteriousness. But I doubt it can.
No, “The Drop” is a collection of poorly organized
parts—some of which are silly and cliché in their own right, others of which
could be good parts of a better movie.
