DeadMan66
Acting were fine as the story demands. But the story was just slow, simple and little tense. I'd blame the story for giving low rating. Story could have been better with some twist. Moreover, I find some scene were useless and boring just the make the movie long. People need patience to watch the whole movie. Movie starts slow and get tense 20 mins before ending.
I'd not recommend it because watching it is like waste time you know you are wasting your time but at the end when movies is finished you wished u could have watched any other instead of this.
yoyopa
Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace are my two favorite actors. I truly think they're both brilliant. But this movie...ugh. The script was WEAK to say the least and I cannot believe I'm saying this but Hardy's performance was... not the best here. Ugh I feel sick even writing this. Honestly I thought his character was mentally handicapped, but at no point was I led to believe that was the point. I loveee Noomi Rapace but I could not for the life of me figure out what the point of her character even was???? Why was she there? Why does she even matter? I don't mind a slow burn of a movie as long as it's reallyyyy going somewhere... this wasn't... at all. Gandolfini plays a complete idiot who decides to try and dupe these eastern european thugs bc???? he used to be the man and now he's not. Honestly when after I asked "what is going on?" then I said "who cares"??? The cop....WHY WAS HE EVEN THERE????? what did that character really even contribute to the story? I was checking the time so often throughout this movie it was upsetting. It's an 1:46...felt like an eternity. weak weak weak script. oh god and the cinematography... good god. That blurred POV, slow reveal crap was GOD AWFUL! An incredible cast had no idea what to do with this mess. I gave it 4 only because of Hardy, Rapace and Gandolfini and my deep admiration for all of them.
adrian-43767
Clearly, this movie carries some violence and might not be everybody's cup of tea, but it is pillared by superb performances by Hardy - perhaps his best to date - Gandolfini, Rapace and Schoenaerts.Good dialogue, strong direction, impeccable photography, and a very credible storyline make this one of the more unexpected gems I have watched recently.Well deserved 8/10.
Joseph_Gillis
which is more relevant here than in most films, and might even be considered a sub-text for it.Perhaps more telling, though, is that the screenplay was adapted by author, Dennis Lehane from one of his short stories; I can recall successful short-story adaptations, but from such as Borges, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Conrad; more often than not, when adaptations of less-feted authors, the plot tends to be stretched to breaking point, where the screenwriter has too many gaps to fill, too much screen-time to pad, and where the story might not have been all that, to begin with.I haven't read the source Lehane short story, so I can only judge what's on the screen, but two things have jumped out at me after viewing the film: one, the conflict between the story's title, 'Animal Rescue', which suggests warmth and compassion, and the film's title, 'The Drop', which the opening voice-over informs us refers to gangsters practices of using legitimate businesses as temporary storage for illicit funds. But yet I don't believe the short story title is entirely ironic, because so much of the film is devoted to revealing Tom Hardy's lead barman Bob character's care and attention for a brutalised and neglected dog. The conflict between those titles suggests more that Lehane was badly compromised between commercial film-making demands, and the intimacy of his short-story characterisation.The other problem I had is the long slow build up, and what it led up to: it's not quite 'deus ex machina' but I had difficulty reconciling the climax with the characterisations that had been slowly and tortuously developed, over 80+ preceding minutes. Which leads me back to the compromise question again.What I did like, though, was the interplay between Bob and the detective, with the detective using their common church-going familiarity to both try to extract information from Bob, and also to get his message across. There weren't enough such inspired ideas, though. I liked Matthias Schoenaerts controlled-scary performance, as legend-in- his-own-mind punk, Eric Deeds. John Ortiz' insidious quiet nagging, as the detective, is another supporting standout. Tom Hardy was just a tad too precious and calculated for me, although he may just have been the victim of too much low-key screen time. (In character motivations, I could make connections with Charles Bronson's similarly-implausible 'Mr. Majestyk') Not the best swansong for James Gandolfini, though - too much of Tony Soprano,albeit a latter-day tired and beaten-down Tony; I would have preferred him to go out on the movie-stealing high of 'Killing them Softly'. That film had all the mood and menace of this one, and then some. Tellingly, perhaps, it's adapted from a novel.
