Michaël Roskam’s ‘The Drop’

Marv (James Gandolfini) runs a tavern where his younger cousin, Bob (Tom Hardy) is the barkeep. Marv is cynical and hardboiled; Bob seems gentle and a little slow. The place still bears Marv’s name, but it’s now owned by a Chechen mob that uses it as a money drop.

There’s a stickup, for all we know by the Chechens themselves, shaking down their own joint or making a point to Marv. The robbers are masked, but Bob notices that one of them wears a stopped watch, and he relates this fact to Lieutenant Torres (John Ortiz), the investigating detective who has had his eye on Marv. Marv is furious at Bob — you never tell the cops anything — and Bob, apologizing, says he doesn’t know how the words popped out of him. When the overly conspicuous watch comes back together with the arm it was attached to, Bob silently wraps it up and dumps it in the river. We gather from this sequence that there is more to Bob than meets the eye.

Consenting to extortion

Still, it is the gentle Bob who rescues an abused puppy from a trash can and, at the encouragement of a neighbor, Nadia (Noomi Rapace), nurses and adopts the dog. Nonetheless, Bob seems so passive that he permits Nadia to name the puppy, even though he prefers another one and resents her bossy imposition.

When Nadia, learning where Bob works, assumes that he is “in the life”— the life of crime, of course— he vigorously protests, insisting that he gave it up years ago. Of course, we already know whom he works for, but Bob seems to make a distinction — academic for us, but crucial to him — between what he did before and where he draws the line now.

Bob and Nadia, herself bruised and wary, launch a tentative relationship. But Nadia’s ex-boyfriend Eric (Matthias Schoenaerts) shows up, claiming to own the dog and demanding money for letting Bob keep it. Bob insists the dog is now his but agrees to the extortion.

Is Nadia part of the shakedown? In this world (perhaps in this script), anything is possible. But soon we see Eric conspiring with Marv — who has read the writing on the wall for himself — to rob the bar on Super Bowl night and make off with the swag from the drop. Bob, suspecting what’s up, prepares for trouble. When it comes, his old criminal reflexes spring back into action.

One false note

Dennis Lehane, who adapted his own short story for the film, works hard to make Bob credible as a decent soul trapped in a brutal, no-exit world. The model, again, is On the Waterfront’s Terry Malloy, and of course it’s no easy task to reprise a role created by Marlon Brando. The British actor Tom Hardy (of The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, etc.), who plays Bob, knows well enough to avoid imitation, and his performance has considerable merit without being entirely successful. The problem is not with Hardy but with Lehane, or whoever conceived the film’s upbeat ending. Bob’s already been sounded out by the Chechens to take over Marv’s business, and we know it’s not an offer but an instruction. Those with the power deal the cards.

Hardy’s performance is sufficiently impressive enough to qualify as a breakthrough role for him; the sadness and ultimate hopelessness in his face conveys more than any spoken text can. James Gandolfini, in his final screen role, actually gives the I-coulda-been-a-contender speech, and it’s the only false note in an otherwise finely judged performance. Noomi Rapace’s Nadia is a far cry from Eva Marie Saint’s convent-school heroine, and for that reason she’s a more realistic character, although Rapace might have dug into her a little deeper.

John Ortiz’s nosy cop is a smarmy figure who upbraids Bob for not going to church but who has to be in on the take at some point — another of the plot’s loose ends. Matthias Schoenaerts lacks the edge to make his Eric threatening, although in any case he’s someone Bob should handle with ease.

The film’s production values are good: Nicholas Karakatsanis’s cinematography, Christopher Tellefsen’s editing, and Marco Beltrami’s menacing score. But The Drop, for all its virtues, is less than the sum of its parts. A good film gets you to think, but a fine film completes its own thought. Roskam creates a convincingly fallen world but holds out a false promise of redemption. Bob has no choice but to shoulder the burden of a past he has never escaped; Nadia harbors no hope of a life free of suspicion and violence with Bob. Call it a Hollywood ending — or a Brussels one — but Romeo and Juliet these lovers are not meant to be.