The Drop

Patience, understanding, questions, commitment, caring modest consistency, observant faithful hesitancy, towing the line, doing the right thing, balance and order, let's see what happens, Michaël R. Roskam's The Drop follows humble Bob (Tom Hardy) as he works, interacts, and serves, loyally playing by the rules, cautiously keeping to himself, never directly causing a stir or ruffling any feathers, maintaining a sense of fair play, strictly aware, of his strengths and limitations.

Hardy puts in a strong performance. Bob's character is quite different from those he dynamically brought to life in Inception and Star Trek: Nemesis. Bob doesn't show much emotion, but Hardy adeptly uses this hindrance to his advantage, notably as he gets to know potential love interest Nadia (Noomi Rapace), carefully and artfully redefining stoicism thereby, never falling out of character, reserved, peaceful, true.

Strong performances all around, causing me to wonder whether or not Roskam studied and/or worked with David O. Russell, who also excels at creating insightful entertaining high-quality sophisticatedly acted films for mass markets, thoughtfully enlightening nocturnally invested narratives, until I rediscovered that it was Roskam who directed Bullhead, after I wrote this, which can compete with Russell's best work, The Drop can as well but maybe not with American Hustle, although perhaps he still is in contact with Russell.

I thought it was odd when Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini) decides to collude with Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts) because Deeds is obviously nuts and therefore too indelicate for his scheme, but this fact does intensify Marv's desperation, highlighting that greed leading to desperation ferments bad judgement, subtly juxtaposed with Bob's decisions, both sets capable of distilling ruin.

Detective Torres (John Ortiz) rounds out the script, showing up whenever it started to occur to me that his plot thread wasn't receiving enough screen time, his comments adding a romantic quality to The Drop's final moments, his conversations, playfully examining the divide between law and order.

Solid film.