Farewell to the Boss

James Gandolfini's final role in The Drop.

««« The Drop.  Written by Dennis Lehane, based on his short story. Directed by Michaël R. Roskum. At area theaters.

By the time James Gandolfini died in 2013, he had only begun to explore his limits as an actor. It was clearly a question that was on his mind: after playing the archetypal modern gangster on The Sopranos for eight years, only one of the roles left in the can after he died was in a straight-up mafia flick. That single exception was a supporting turn in Michaël R. Roskum's The Drop.

          The reason he chose it turns out to be straightforward. Unlike The Sopranos, The Drop has a small-time focus, centered on only a few characters in and around a minor watering hole in Brooklyn. The hero is Bob (Tom Hardy), a seemingly slow-witted barkeep with a long and mysterious connection to his cousin, "Uncle" Marv (Gandolfini). Marv's bar is one of the places the mob uses to collect its cash pay-offs in the neighborhood (thus a "drop"). The guys manage to keep their noses clean until a pair of gunmen pull an ill-advised robbery—leaving Bob and Marv on the hook for the lost money.

          The story (based on Dennis Lehane's short story "Animal Rescue") is full of unspoken history wrapped in a layer of outer-borough grit. Gandolfini's interest in it comes clear about midway through, when he complains that he was once a player, "a guy to be feared"—but no longer. It's tempting to think Gandolfini saw Uncle Marv as one version of Tony Soprano's future, after losing his family and all his power. Lonely and irrelevant, terrified he's becoming just another "jerk-off", he's a guy liable to desperate gambles.

          The Drop is a latter-day Sidney Lumet film that feels about as Brooklyn as Flatbush Avenue. This is remarkable in that virtually none of the principals are actually from Brooklyn or anyplace else in America. Hardy is Australian, Noomi Rapace is Spanish/Swedish, Matthias Schoenaerts and director Roskum are Belgian. (Gandolfini and writer Lehane are from New Jersey and Massachusetts, respectively—both about as foreign to Brooklyn as Belgium.) Would a typically Brooklyn director, say Spike Lee, have produced something equally authentic about the working-class neighborhood of Marollen in Brussels? Qui sait?

          For his part, Hardy has mastered that particularly Brooklyn tilt of the head, that way of looking a guy in the face without overtly confronting him. Though the obvious comparison is to DeNiro, there's something Brando-esque about Hardy's presence that bodes well for the future. (Hardy will play Mad Max in the upcoming Road Warrior remake.)

          When The Sopranos ended in 2012, many fans were disappointed by David Chase's decision to close with no ending at all. At least with respect to Tony Soprano, The Drop presents one version of what might have been.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro