Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

The Drop

After sitting through 37 previews, each worse than the last, I was "rewarded" with the opening scene of The Drop and with it my very own Scooby-Doo moment.  Because when Cousin Marv first appeared I shot up out of my seat, pointed a trembling finger at the screen and yelled, "It's a g-g-g-ghost!"

The other moviegoers were not amused.

Like a flash, I whipped out Occam's razor and realized that it wasn't a g-g-g-ghost; it was just James G-G-G-Gandolfini in a role he must have filmed before curling up for his dirt nap last year.  Speaking of which, why was everyone so surprised when that hard-drinkin', drug-lovin', cigarette-smokin', triple-chinned man-cow keeled over at 51?  That's kind of like dropping your jaw at the news that Ray Rice's wife's favorite song is "He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)."

Gandolfini - how did a guy with the Italianized version of Gandalf right there in his name not return as Gandolfini the Slightly Less Swarthy or some such? - plays Marv, the previous proprietor of Cousin Marv's Bar, which is now owned by Chechen gangsters who, for some unaccountable reason, continue to let Marv run the place.  Marv's cousin Bob (Tom Hardy) bartends at the joint.  From time to time it becomes the mob's drop bar, a sort of one-night-only bank for all of its gambling, pimping and drug-dealing proceeds.

If you guessed that someone is going to try to snatch the cash on a drop night, give yourself a big, fat gold star.  Then give yourself a big, fat wedgie, you fucking apple polisher.

When it all comes down to it, The Drop is just the gritty crime drama equivalent of Seinfeld.  They both take place in New York City - though The Drop moves things across the East River to Brooklyn and gives everyone an over-exaggerated New Yawk accent.  They both feature one vagina-totin' character to break up the sausage party.  And both the show and the movie are about absofuckinglutely nothing.

Noomi Rapace, formerly the original girl with the dragon tattoo and less formerly the lead in the cock-punchingly awful Prometheus, is the aforementioned token vajajay.  Oh, and much to Michael Vick's shit-eating chagrin, there's an abused Pit Bull that's rescued rather than electrocuted or drowned.  It might have been better, though, if the dog had been Vicked.  It gets more screentime than most of the two-legged actors, yet it doesn't matter one goddamn bit to the story.  

The Drop tries to pretend it has a twist ending, but the only mystery anywhere within a borough of this cinematic sleeping pill is how Tom Hardy got away with admitting to smoking the occasional pole yet continues to get cast in tough guy roles.  Either Hollywood's gay mafia is working overtime on his pillowy-lipped behalf, or Tinseltown really has evolved since being even homo-adjacent was a career killer.

Jack Lord, Rock Hudson and the like are probably green with envy.  That or, you know, decay. 

September 14, 2014