The Drop

Watching a new release which stars an actor who has recently died is always strange for a number of reasons. First, there's always the nostalgia; it's hard to see them as whatever character they are portraying because all that's in your head is the relentless number of tributes and stories that have been told over the past few weeks. Second, you wonder if they would have actually gone through with making the film knowing that it was going to be their last. Do you really want Something Wicked to be the last thing that's on people's minds? Or are you one of the lucky ones like Brandon Lee with The Crow? And speaking of Brittany Murphy, it's also weird watching them on screen and still wanting to have sex with them. I know that on some level that's a little gross but is that any weirder than watching Breakfast at Tiffany's and wanting to have sex with Audrey Hepburn? No, it's not! So leave me alone. She was at her peak in 8 Mile by the way but moving on...

On the surface it looks as though James Gandolfini lucked out by getting to work with director Michael R. Roskam; the same guy that directed the excellent and brutal Bullhead, my favorite foreign film of 2011. I am just thankful for him and every Sopranos fan out there that his last work wasn't The Mexican starring Brad Pitt. "Hollywood is crazy...First they had The Mexican with Brad Pitt and now they have The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. Well I've written a film, maybe they'll produce my film. The Last Ni**a on Earth starring Tom Hanks." Paul Mooney

In The Drop Gandolfini is basically playing a retired Tony Soprano. He and his cousin Bob (Tom Hardy) run a bar in seedy Brooklyn where they are part of an underground criminal organization. They play the smallest of roles in it however as they are just the drop bar for whenever the crime bosses need them; they basically just hold on to the town's dirty money for a night. Marv (Gandolfini) tried being a player in the game back in the day but it never really quite worked out for him, so now he just works for the Chechens as their lowly front man.

His cousin Bob is the quiet and simple bar tender who keeps his head down and tries to avoid any real trouble. He's always the voice of reason for Marv and is basically his right hand man. But both of their lives are changed forever on the night that their bar is held up. The Chechens don't seem to care that it supposedly wasn't their fault, they still want their money and they make this very clear to them by sending them quite a few brutal messages. Not to mention the fact that Bob's new girlfriend Nadia (Noomi Rapace) brings her own baggage to his life which includes the mentally unstable and dangerous Eric (Matthias Schoenaerts).

The movie moves a little slow and you wonder where they are going with it at times but as the story unfolds and everything comes to a head, you find that you have moved from comfortably reclining to clinching the edge of your seat.

Earlier this year I wrote about how Ryan Gosling is the new Billy Dee Williams; you can add him in any movie and it instantly makes the movie cooler, see Empire Strikes Back and Tim Burton's Batman. Well Tom Hardy is now the white Denzel Washington! He cool, super talented, can morph into any character you need him to, and he steals every scene he's in. All he needs now are the giant veneers! He absolutely owns this role, as do the other actors in this movie. Roskam does an excellent job of getting the best from everyone involved in this film and in creating one of the best throwback crime thrillers from the 70's.

I rate this movie as very FRESH and I suggest that you pop in.

Oh by the way, what's with Hollywood and the rise of Chechnya? Decades ago all of the bad guys were British, then they moved on to Germans, Russians, and eventually made their way to the Yakuza and every Muslim on the planet. Now all of the evil men in the world are from Chechnya? I guess a random night in a Russian strip club went horribly wrong for some Hollywood execs!