James Gandolfini The Drop

James Gandolfini The Drop, It's hard to dismiss the sorrow, the tremendous loss felt by us all when James Gandolfini suddenly died in June of last year. He had already portrayed one of the all-time great characters, the mob-boss-in-therapy, Tony Soprano on The Sopranos, one of the most important television shows of our age. He had several film roles before and after The Sopranos, but audiences were just starting to realize his range and depth as an actor. Postmortem, he gave us what was perhaps his best film performance, in last year's romantic comedy Enough Said, opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus. He appears in his final film role in The Drop (opening today), playing a crooked bar owner, a role that puts him back in the crime genre one last time, a place where many of us first met him.

The distraction of Gandolfini's mere presence in this film was, for me, palpable. Eyes and hearts will be glued to him at all times, as perhaps they should be. It's hard to think of anything else, other than to be constantly reminded of this amazing actor gone all too soon.

In The Drop, Gandolfini plays Marv, a shady bar owner in a seedy part of Brooklyn, but the story centers around one of his bartenders, Bob (Tom Hardy). Years ago, Marv was pushed out as the real owner of his own establishment, when some Chechen mobsters took over. "Cousin Marv's Bar" is now a drop spot for payments to the higher-ups, where low-level criminals make "drops" incognito. One night, Bob and Marv are in the bar when the place is robbed by two masked vigilantes. With the Chechen mobster's money now missing, they are sucked in way over their heads...but not all is as it seems.

The story comes from acclaimed author, Dennis Lehane, who brought us Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island, all of which were of course adapted for the big screen. Lehane is gaining quite the reputation as one of the most-read crime novelists going and has even penned episodes of The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, both of which are right up his alley. The Drop doesn't quite reach the heights of these previously mentioned works, existing in the same dank underworld but lacking an edge.

Much of this story, on-screen anyways, is painstakingly slow-moving. It introduces us to a colorful cast of characters but many of them are walking, talking cliches of the genre. Marv is a grumpy crook still seething after having his bar snatched from under him. Bob seems clueless and laid-back, numb or blind or both to the criminal world around him. The bad guys play bad, the junkies act like junkies. There are no real surprises...until a big surprise near the end that nearly redeems the film's many flaws.

Lehane's original short story was titled "Animal Shelter," as a sub-plot in the movie involves Bob finding and rescuing a pitbull puppy from a trashcan. The trashcan happens to be owned by Nadia (Noomi Rapace, the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), and the two become somewhat awkward friends. Nadia's creepy ex (Matthias Schoenaerts) complicates matters a bit.

The bar heist at the beginning of the film sets things up nicely, but then we are forced to wait, given distracting filler for much of the middle portion. The pitbull storyline was dull and out-of-place and Hardy and Rapace create zero chemistry together. Actor John Ortiz, playing a snooping Detective, adds life in his scenes, but it never really goes anywhere.

The Drop is not a bad film, by any means, and maybe it's unfair to compare it to other Lehane films. But its a strange, brooding movie that will probably appeal to crime drama buffs, and not many others. Still, there is James Gandolfini...reason enough to remember The Drop, in spite of itself.

Genre: Crime, Drama

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes, Rated R

Starring: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini, Matthias Schoenaerts, John Ortiz, Elizabeth Rodriguez

Screenplay by Dennis Lehane (author of the novels, Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island), based on his short story "Animal Rescue"