The Drop is a crime drama set in an alternate universe where Brooklyn is
completely devoid of hipsters, PBR, and skinny jeans. It tells the story of a
couple of has-been low key gangsters who run a money laundering operation for
their new crimes bosses, who are unsurprisingly greasy Eastern Europeans. The
setting is cold and dark, the characters are brooding and hold many secrets,
and there is an adorable pit bull puppy in it from the very beginning.
 |
| (That's not the Pitbull we're talking about) |
 |
| (This one) |
The Drop seems to be another sad, dark, super-serious movie, and in many ways it is. The actual subject matter is quite heavy and there is a fair amount of blood, murder, violence, and general New York-style thin crust sketchiness. And then there's this cute puppy, whining and licking things and hopping around like a little ball of fur. This movie has a lot of black humor, and anyone who enjoys finding humor in the sadder things in life will enjoy this movie a lot.
First off, the acting in The
Drop is great. Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, and the girl without the dragon tattoo all do a great job of bringing otherwise normal, relatively boring
characters to life. They all feel like people you'd meet on a typical winter
day in Brooklyn and the accents are done perfectly. The Russian gangsters pull
off the "intimidating foreigner" thing very well, and even the puppy
delivers a grade-A performance. Did I mention that there are no hipsters,
either?
The story is also very competent
and concise. It leaves out unnecessary elements such as over the top sex
scenes, car chases, huge explosions for no reason, robots, and corny one
liners. The Drop forgoes these overdone crime movie antics for more
nuanced things like repeatedly running a person over, delivering a long rant to
a dead body, and stealing someone's umbrella. It has a specific story to tell
and it tells it in a very straightforward manner. This sounds simple because it
is, and that simplicity allows you to get deeply involved in the characters and
their situations without trying to follow a over complicated plot, which leads
to a very engaging movie going experience.
And then there's the humor. The
Drop is chock full of amusing moments if you can manage to view the dark
subject matter in a humorous way. It may not have been the intention for
certain parts to be funny, but there are a few clues in the movie that make me
think it was. The biggest of those clues is the puppy. Of course its presence
serves a symbolic purpose, bringing up themes like nature vs nurture, needing
to be rescued, and not judging things by their looks. All of that could have
been accomplished with an older, less heart-meltingly adorable puppy, though.
The fact that they decided to use this puppy, who is just as goofy, fuzzy and
uncoordinated as you want it to be, belies some intention for the movie to have
lighthearted moments. The humor in this movie is great because it manages to be
funny without breaking viewers out of the trance it puts them in. Every laugh
feels like it belongs.
 |
| (Sigh, James Gandolfini's last role) |
