Director Michaël Roskam made a strong debut with Bullhead, an ominous Belgian drama that was nominated last year for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture. A yarn about petty criminals and black market steroids, the film featured an excellent lead performance by Flemish actor Matthias Schoenaerts as Jacky, a farmer and small time criminal who, jacked up on hubris and hormones, was slowly seeding his own destruction. With his new noir thriller,The Drop, Roskam chose a Dennis Lehane short story, “Animal Rescue,” and transplanted it from Boston to Brooklyn. A wise decision: from The Boondock Saints through Mystic River,The Departed, and Ray Donovan, the mash-up of Southie crime and the Catholic Church has become more than a little tread-worn. Lehane’s story is well suited to New York’s grimy streets and working class neighborhoods, where the Catholic Church still looms large. Roskam’s visual style emphasizes the proletariat faces and dark spaces of a dingy terrain filled with the omnipresent one–upsmanship of small time crooks.
James Gandolfini, in his final role, is Cousin Marv MORE .........
James Gandolfini, in his final role, is Cousin Marv MORE .........