The Drop

THE DROP          B+         
USA  (106 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Michaël R. Roskam       Official site

Everybody has a past…There are some sins that you commit, that you can’t come back from, no matter how hard you try. 

—Bob Saginowski

Listen, listen, just take it easy.  Listen to me.  That is life.  That’s what it is.  People like me, coming along when you’re not looking. 

—Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts)

Only Roskam’s second film, following the international acclaim received with the bleak but riveting Belgian film 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #6 Bullhead (Rundskop) , which immediately caught the attention of Hollywood executives who invited him to make his second film in America, offering him the script of well-known screenwriter, Dennis Lehane, who penned Clint Eastwood’s MYSTIC RIVER (2003), Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone (2007), and Martin Scorsese’s SHUTTER ISLAND (2010), not to mention several episodes of the popular television show The Wire (2004 – 08), so he is a proven commodity.  Working with Lehane’s short story Animal Rescue set in Boston, the filmmaker has assembled an extraordinary international cast and makes the most of it, transporting the film to a non-descript Brooklyn neighborhood where dirty money changes hands on a nightly basis.  The story centers around a neighborhood dive bar known as Cousin Marv’s, the name of the former owner, the late James Gandolfini in his final role, wearing a New York Jets hoodie, hanging Yankees and Giants posters on the walls, who lost his bar nearly a decade ago to Chechen gangsters, but continues to run the place, making regular payments to the mob, who make deals, investments, collect on bets won or lost, and at the end of the night the money has to end up somewhere, where the last stop along the way is a money drop funneling cash to organized crime in an underworld network of Brooklyn bars, where the location changes from day to day to keep the heat off of any one specific bar.  The noirish inner narration is provided by Marv’s street savvy bartender, Bob Saginowski, Tom Hardy from Locke (2013) channeling Brando’s Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan’s ON THE WATERFRONT (1954), where he’s a local kid from the neighborhood seemingly without much education, who doesn’t talk much but is a straight up guy, honest, hard working, and dependable, where Marv is his actual cousin, and the two have a familiar way of talking to one another as if they’ve known each other for years, which of course they have.  Nothing phases these two guys, as they’ve been through it all, but they’re a bit taken aback when a couple of punks wearing masks rob the place one night, taking $5000 of mob money out of the register.  A visit from Chovka (Michael Aronov) and his heavies wanting their money back doesn’t make them rest any easier, where they’re on the hook for the missing money.    

When an overly curious cop (John Ortiz) shows up sniffing around for clues, he recognizes Bob from seeing him at mass, but also that he hasn’t taken communion in over twenty years, suggesting his watchful eyes and ears are everywhere.  At about the same time, Bob discovers a wounded pit bull puppy abandoned in a trash can, where the home owner, Nadia (Noomi Rapace), invites him in and helps clean up the dog, where they become friends, of a sort, where both seem to be harboring a world of secrets, scarred and wounded souls themselves that are otherwise nearly completely disconnected from the rest of the world with no friends, no social life, no real prospects for the future, but go about their daily business in the light of day seemingly invisible to others.  These are the kinds of characters that inhabit Lehane stories, thieves, thugs, and hard guys, as he specializes in establishing authenticity in working class neighborhoods, where cinematically retaining his attention to detail is essential, filled with characters who are dark and moody, usually still haunted by disturbing incidents or horrible choices from their past, living lives of sin and redemption, where it’s not at all surprising to find some that are nearly doomed, as tragedy awaits their every step.  After Bob takes the dog home and tries to provide a normal and stable environment, he’s visited by an ominously dangerous figure, Eric Deeds, Matthias Schoenaerts from Bullhead (Rundskop) (2011) and Rust and Bone (De rouille et d'os) (2011), who likely inflicted the damage to both the dog and Nadia, whose brooding presence, and the knowledge that he likely killed one of Marv’s old customers, is a continuous threat.  Both men are lonesome characters defined by keeping things to themselves, hiding some sort of shady past, but have now apparently gone straight.  Bob’s connection to Nadia has been transforming, both for the dog and himself, but Eric wants them both back, threatening to inflict more damage on the dog if there is any trouble.  While Bob is busy dealing with the insane presence of Eric, reminiscent of the demented criminality of Peter Stormare in Fargo (1996), Marv has the mob to answer to, where this mysterious interplay in and out of a shadowy world provides tense and creepy atmosphere throughout.  The film is a pensive, darkly troubling slow burn of unfolding events, where the somber music by Marco Beltrami and Raf Keunen never interferes, remaining quietly atmospheric in the background, where the film accentuates the performances of the characters, trusting the depth and complexity they bring to the screen. 

While the short story was written ten years ago, Lehane expanded the screenplay for the making of the movie, and only afterwards wrote a short novel to support the film.  Opening with a group of men toasting a friend who died (or was murdered) ten years ago, a kid named Richie Whalen, aka Glory Days, where Marv offers free shots on the house, while muttering to Bob that these men “need to move on.”  Marv is a kind of gloomy character who will never be satisfied because life didn’t turn out the way he wanted, so he nitpicks and harps on every last little detail, believing life doesn’t offer anybody a chance.  When the mob money mysteriously arrives all covered in blood in a plastic sack, after a long pause awaiting the verdict, Chovka is satisfied with the results, announcing the biggest drop of the year will take place in the bar on Super Bowl Sunday.  Drenched in brooding atmosphere, the film is a parade of compelling characters that are continually underplayed throughout, where in the criminal world emotions are viewed as a weakness, so instead this is a minimalist film noir that continually explores the dark side of human nature.  Violence in this film is continually alluded to, but comes infrequently, yet the effect can be startling, where lives are spinning in the balance, as Roskam does an excellent job drawing the audience into this bleak yet lurid world, inhabited by such world-weary figures.  As Eric, who is little more than a thug, puts pressure on Bob to return his dog, he decides to take ten grand for the dog as his final offer, due by the next day.  When Bob protests that some stranger can’t just walk into somebody’s life and expect ten grand, Eric has the perfect answer that may as well be the theme of the film, “Listen, listen, just take it easy.  Listen to me.  That is life.  That’s what it is.  People like me, coming along when you’re not looking.”  True enough, this is a film that plays with the audience’s expectations, that dangles possibilities out there like a carrot on a stick and then goes in another direction, as the real beauty of the film is figuring out what lays underneath the surface, where people dwell on the past, but not always on what you think, as often it’s different than what they tell you, offering a smokescreen to hide the real truth.  Roskam has the audience guessing as to the true nature of each of these characters, where the grizzled performances are among the year’s best, especially Tom Hardy, who literally transforms himself into the role, the kind of part Harvey Keitel would play in the Scorsese movies, as despite the seedy world that surrounds him, he never wants to move far from the moral center, even as he deals with such brutally dark extremes, where mob guys are capable of anything.  The story has a savage center, where the beast is in man, yet so is the possibility of redemption. 

Gone Baby Gone

GONE BABY GONE           B            

USA  (114 mi)  2007  d:  Ben Affleck 

I always thought it was the things you don’t choose that makes you who you are. 

—Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck)

A surprisingly complex film that isn’t over when it’s over, that leaves you wondering how you got from point A to point B when so much in between seemed ridiculously contrived, almost defying belief, yet somehow in the end, there’s still plenty to like about this film, much of it from going against the grain.  First of all there’s Casey Affleck (Patrick Kenzie), absolutely nobody’s version of a hero, especially fresh off his performance where the title of the film outright calls his character a coward, THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2007), recalled awhile back as one of the crazy lunkheads in Gus van Sant’s GERRY (2002), who now appears as one of the strangest leading characters, as he could just as easily be anyone, the kind of guy who disappears unnoticed in a crowd.  But here he’s Patrick Kenzie, a private eye with a gun and a beautiful babe (Michelle Monaghan), a short-fused badass who stands up to punks on the street as well as thugs in all walks of life, keeping his brain on alert while the world is spinning out of control all around him.  This is as improbable as Elliot Gould playing a mumbling Philip Marlowe in a sun tinged take on Raymond Chandler’s film noir world in Robert Altman’s THE LONG GOODBYE (1973), which by the way also caught us off guard, but worked.  Second of all there’s the man behind the camera, a former tabloid king whose acting career and reputation have fizzled to record lows, as he’s become an easy target, routine fodder for jokes condemning him as a lamebrain to the second hand bin.  What’s he trying to do here, take on the persona of George Clooney as a clever mastermind behind the camera?  And third there’s Morgan Freeman, a man whose reputation is rock solid in his role as chief of police, a man’s man, a leader of men, the kind of guy you would want to have in your corner in a time of trouble, as he’s wise enough to pass for several men.  And finally there’s Amy Ryan (at the time of the release, who?), as unsympathetic a character as the screen has seen in ages, and yet it is this director who remains undaunted by her scandalous behavior, who by the end of this film makes us all question ourselves, like who are we to judge?  Yet judgments are made throughout this film, most with enormous consequences, which makes this a highly provocative crime thriller about a stolen baby, where a private eye and his good looking partner are called upon to look through the cracks and scour the dregs of what the police usually overlook or can’t see. 

Opening in first person narration, this initially has the feel of a literary warhorse like SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1982), where the poetic thoughts invoke something outside our comprehension, beyond our grasp, yet then veers into the working class neighborhoods of Boston in a completely unpretentious view of the world, where a baby has gone missing and a distraught family is on the news begging for her safe return.  Suspicious of the police, the family hires this improbable young couple, hoping they know people who don’t talk to the police.  Into the seedy underworld they go, with the beautiful girl following his every move into the gutter, through back room bars, into the homes of crack dealers, where we learn that the foul-mouthed crackhead mother (Amy Ryan) with the missing girl moves within these circles, a mother who may have put her own daughter at risk just for a chance to get high.  Eventually the private eyes team up with a couple of veteran detectives (Ed Harris and Nick Poole), an unsavory relationship from the outset, each openly suspicious of the other, where Kenzie is told to “Go back to your Harry Potter books.”  What’s most surprising perhaps to the viewer is Affleck’s immediate ascension to lead man on the case, where he appears more like a cop than a cop, yet he’s not supposed to be a cop, just a guy from the neighborhood.  This is the first of a series of improbable occurrences that stretch one’s credulity, but Affleck makes it work with his profanity laced chutzpah, standing up to thugs and hoods like he’s been doing it all his life, showing the kind of balls that gains immediate acceptance into a cop’s world.  As the danger mounts, so do the unsavory characters.  The division between male and female is tested, as they’re challenged in very different ways.  The tense atmosphere makes it hard to separate the good guys from the bad, as they’re continuously interwoven into each other’s lives, mirror reflections of this kind of sick underworld where intense flare ups are routine, where staring down the barrel of a gun becomes the measure of a man, not the kind of world most of us would choose to enter, which makes it all the more intriguing when we witness moral leaps of faith.

This brooding contemplative thriller is a series of mood swings that moves like a chessboard across this murky landscape, where every action causes an unexpected reaction, with inexplicable consequences that only grow darker as the film progresses.  Monaghan is overly pretty and never feels right when the going gets rough, but the rest of the cast has a hard edge that’s been through tough times.  Written by MYSTIC RIVER (2003) novelist Dennis Lehane, we’re once again asked to examine modern day morals under siege, where there’s a thick layer of grime like quicksand just under the surface pulling us all too easily into this morass of moral ambiguity where it’s much simpler to look the other way, and righteous indignity has a youthful, idealist resemblance to Crusader Rabbit with a witty arcane charm that feels instantly outdated and out of place.  Despite some off-the-rails plot twists, this is a film of ideas where the believability of the actors makes all the difference in the world and the strong performances are supported by the weight of the film, a surprisingly strong effort that never bows to the outsider money interests of happy endings commercialism and maintains its integrity right through to the end in a shot that visually recalls the final shot of Ryan Gosling in HALF NELSON (2006), but offers a bleaker ray of hope.