Review: The Drop

It is not often that a trailer has mislead me in my expectations for the worst. However, The Drop has managed to do that.

For many people, they are going to see this for James Gandolfini's last performance.
For others it will be the interesting trailer and Tom Hardy's performance.

I was looking a bit of both, but mainly the latter. Directed by Michael Roskam who is mainly known for directing the pretty solid Oscar nominated Bullhead, the trailer suggests a really gritty crime thriller with intense performances and a killer twist.

For most of the film, I had the sense that we were on the verge of a tense feature. But sadly, it was constantly in the development stage and kept stalling right up to the hugely disappointment ending.

Thankfully, this film does have its redeeming features. This is solely thanks to the performances. Lead by Tom Hardy who is becoming one of the big attractions in the film industry. He definitely keeps you interested, and the supporting cast gave us a lot of potential.
Gandolfini gives us a fine farewell and manages to trump the rest of the cast. There is one scene where I was actually engrossed in the film and felt like the perfect send-off for a career that I saw very little of.
Another performance that was interesting enough to save the film was Matthias Schoenarts who lead Roskam's previous installment Bullhead. His performance actually could have been improved if his character was given more development. As for Noomi Rapace, her best is still from the Millenium trilogy most notably in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I still feel her best performance in an American film is still yet to come.

My final thought is that I feel the director was trying to make a modern 'Mean Streets'. I am afraid to say that he failed to achieve this. It felt like a short story that was forgotten to be given any development to move on to the next stage. The movie was constantly in first gear. But like I said, the saving grace is the performances. Tom Hardy gave us a sympathetic character that we could root for, Gandolfini's swan song stole the show especially in one defining scene, Rapace was solid and Schoenaerts was gritty and cold. But sadly, none of them was given enough story to develop their characters. For me, it is a failure. But luckily, it still gets a respectable score due to the potential it showed from their actors and it at least it had basic solid structure to it.

Rating: 7/10