Author Dennis LeHane may be the anti-Stephen King in at least one respect: film adaptations of his literary works have ranged from very good (Ben Afflecks Gone, Baby, Gone) to great (Clint Eastwoods Mystic River). Adapted from LeHanes short story Animal Rescue by the author himself and directed with a near invisible hand by Michael Roskum, The Drop may be the best Lehane adaptation yet. The Drop is ostensibly about the goings-on at a lower-class drop bar in Boston. A Drop bar, it is explained, is a place where organized crime dumps its bookmaking money. When the bar is robbed, Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini) and his cousin Bob Saginowsky (Tom Hardy) each have a lot of unfriendly light shined on them from both sides of the law, and nothing that scatters away from that light is particularly pleasant. To say any more would be to spoil some surprises. The Drop is much like the first Rocky in style if not in substance; you can practically feel the sidewalk of the lower-class Boston neighborhood depicted by LeHane and Raskom under your feet. And what can you say about Tom Hardy at this point? He not only adds another complex portrait to his already impressive resume, he leads one of the strongest casts you are likely to find in a movie theater this year. Noomi Rapace does a one-eighty from her Girl with the Dragon Tatoo persona, Matthias Schoenaerts as Eric Deeds is a real find; his dead-eyed, slow-moving sociopath is scary without ever making a threatening move, and this is a worthy good-by for James Gandolfini, here playing the low, instead of the high man on the organized crime totem poll. There is a strong gothic/mythic pull in much of the films made from LeHanes work, and The Drop is no exception. You could say it is a non-supernatural horror movie, with the films darkness rooted in human constructs. It is not the thing under the bed which is the source of the movies horror, but the desperation for upward mobility afflicting almost anyone not born rich. A tight, well-paced story with really only five characters, The Drop is good, old-fashioned, non-pretentious filmmaking that in an earlier era might have been made by Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet. I say check it out.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 12:05:26 +0000
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