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Rating: Michael Roskam landed in Hollywood right after being nominated for an Oscar for his film debut "Bullhead," a co-production between France and Holland. Three years later, here he is on the new continent directing names like Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, and Noomi Rapace in "The Drop" (original title "The Drop"), based on a story by Dennis Lehane, someone who also scripted "Mystic River," "Shutter Island," some episodes of the HBO masterpiece "The Wire," and collaborated again with director Ben Affleck for "Live by Night," the fourth feature film of the chin. In short, someone who knows his stuff as a writer and screenwriter, always ready to handle difficult subjects and twisted, thrilling narratives.
The story here also doesn't escape Lehane's conventions: Hardy and Gandolfini run a bar owned by more or less powerful mobsters. They suffer a robbery and need to find the money to return, Hardy finds a dog that makes him the bait of a madman who comes and goes freely from his home, and finally, his bar is chosen to be the "drop bar" on Super Bowl night when some mobster will come by to collect the money hidden inside the venue.
All the characteristic traits of Lehane's writing are also present here in good doses: criminals of not well-defined rank, characters with an obscure past and uncertain present, an environment immersed in an ostentatious yet unembellished "urban poverty", and a classic noir atmosphere. Roskam, the Belgian filmmaker, makes all these suggestions his own and succeeds in shaping a film that, thanks especially to a claustrophobic cinematography, makes a morbid story unfold flatly from the beginning. The reservations start directly from the choice of the protagonist: Tom Hardy is now considered one of the best emerging actors, yet his Bob Saginowski, serene, calculated, and calculating, almost detached from the world, is totally in antithesis with the classic character one would expect from someone like him. Try to believe it, but Hardy seems quite awkward and out of place.
Without the ability to analyze the criminal underbelly, without the strength to elevate the story to something other than a simple noir tale, Roskam finds himself having to manage a film with a slow pace, where the plot twists are concentrated at the end and, as "hard" as they may be, they turn out to be very predictable from the start (and in this, the blame is also and above all Lehane's screenplay). Rapace's character (who is still the best of the cast) seems to have no precise role, other than to spark a bit of repressed sexuality in the bartender Bob in his detached attitude from everything and everyone.
"The Drop" seems like one of the many undefined films devoid of a true soul that now fill the market, albeit without having the advertising might on their side. The underlying problem is the same as other recent thriller/gangster titles (and just citing "The Iceman" and "Black Mass" is enough): banalization of the genre behind already-seen stylistic choices (the lonely man, repressed love, difficult religiosity), and continuation along formal and substantial lines that have already said everything in a multitude of past films that completely engulf these works. And it's a shame because for atmosphere, cinematography, cast, and Lehane's screenplay, there were all the right arrows for a film with a different tone. Instead, we are in the mediocrity of anonymity.
5.5
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