James Gandolfini – Memphis Flyer

When a famous actor dies in his or her prime, it can be a while before their final film is released. Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar in 1976 for Network, as did Heath Ledger, who won for his performance as the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight. James Gandolfini, who died in June 2013, was nominated posthumously for a passel of awards last year for starring opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Enough Said. But, it turns out, that wasn’t his final role.

James Gandolfini and Tom Hardy

The run down Brooklyn environs where The Drop is set was familiar territory to Gandolfini, who spent 8 years across the river in New Jersey playing crime boss Tony in The Sopranos. Gandolfini’s character in The Drop, Marv, was not much of a stretch for the late actor: He’s pretty much just Tony Soprano, only he’s not very good at being a gangster. He used to own his own bar, Cousin Marv’s, but then he got into some trouble with gambling debts and lost control of the place to a bunch of Chechen gangsters, led by Covka (Michael Aronov). But Marv is still a trusted, stand-up guy, and nowadays, his bar is one of many in the New York area used as a drop point for illegal gambling money destined for laundering.

These facts are laid out for the audience in an opening voice-over by Bob (Tom Hardy), the bartender at Cousin Marv’s and, not coincidentally, Marv’s actual cousin. The Drop is ostensibly Bob’s story, but as you may have intuited from the fact that I’m halfway done with this review and I’m just now getting around to mentioning him, Hardy is overshadowed by Gandolfini at every turn.

Bob doesn’t come across as too bright, and while he’s at home behind the bar, he seems to drift through life detached from the world. He goes to 8 a.m. mass every morning at the local Catholic church, but he never takes communion. Walking home from the bar late one night, he finds a beaten, bloody pitbull puppy in a trashcan in front of a house that belongs to Nadia (Noomi Rapace). Bob, being the stoic, kind of slow guy that he is, doesn’t know how to take care of a dog, so Nadia has to help him get up to speed on the subject, and sparks fly.

Actually, sparks completely fail to fly. Hardy has proven himself to be a good actor in roles such as this year’s Locke and in 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but here, he takes taciturn to its ridiculous extreme. Subtlety is a virtue for a screen actor, but Hardy sleepwalks through The Drop. His alleged love interest Nadia is given so little to do (besides being kind to animals) that the single facial expression Rapace wears for the entire movie is appropriate. When feminist film writers complain about women whose only apparent function is to be put in peril to motivate the hero, Nadia is exactly what they’re talking about. But if there’s no chemistry between the hero and the damsel in distress, then it’s pretty hard to care when she’s in peril.

But then again, it’s pretty hard to care about anything in The Drop. No one seems to express any emotion besides baseless machismo. The heist around which the plot revolves (robbing the drop bar on Superbowl Sunday when it is flush with cash) is pretty small potatoes — which, in a world where every movie hero has to save the world and/or universe, is actually kind of refreshing. Director Michael R. Roskam and writer Dennis Lehane are clearly going for a slow burn, but they turned in a no-burn. The camera loved Gandolfini to the end, and if you’re a big fan, it’s probably worth it to see him be the wiseguy one more time. But there’s no other reason to recommend The Drop.

The Drop
Opens Friday, September 12th
Studio on the Square

Sometimes the big screen is actually smaller.

Enough Said, the latest low-key comedy-of-manners-and-morals indie from accomplished writer-director Nicole Holofcener (Please Give, Friends With Money), pairs two television icons — The Sopranos‘ James Gandolfini and Seinfeld‘s (and, okay, Veep‘s) Julia Louis-Dreyfus — in more delicate, human-scale roles than the ones that made them famous.

Louis-Dreyfus is Eva, a self-employed masseuse, and Gandolfini is Albert, curator of a television history museum. They are each entering middle age a divorced, single, shared-custody parent of a soon-to-be-college-bound daughter.

When Eva and Albert meet at a party, it’s not love at first sight. She doesn’t even find the balding, overweight Albert attractive. But each feels their options shrinking, and a dutiful first date yields some real if very tentative chemistry.

Eva’s doubts are magnified by her relationship with a new client she meets the same night she meets Albert, an alluring but severe poet played by Holofcener regular Catherine Keener, against whose opinions and pronouncements Eva measures her fledgling relationship with Albert. There’s a plot contrivance binding these relationships that feels a little unnecessary. But it’s a conceit a lesser film would build its whole world upon. Here, it’s closer to something that just happens.

Enough Said gives Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus each, rather shockingly, their only really good lead film roles, and they make a fetching, deeply relatable couple.

There’s extra poignancy, of course, in Gandolfini’s performance. The actor died this summer, at age 51. This appears to be his penultimate performance, and his final lead, and discussions of Albert’s weight and health carry an unintended extra sting. If it wasn’t already apparent that Gandolfini was one of the best actors of his generation — and his towering Tony Soprano pretty much answers that — playing so far against type, and so beautifully, provides added evidence. Playing a sheepish fifty-something single guy made even more self-conscious as a result of an unhappy marriage, Gandolfini gives a warm, sensitive, immensely satisfying performance. It’s a glimpse at an alternate career that now will never be, as a savior for real-world, grown folks’ rom-coms.

And Louis-Dreyfus not only carries her half of the romantic main plot but also is equally fine in a subplot that could have easily bloomed into its own film, about the mutually needy relationship she develops with her daughter’s neglected best friend.

Though far from flawless, this is a fine film about such underexplored topics as middle-aged courtship and middle-aged sex, about how making peace with others’ (perceived) imperfections can be less about settling than about generosity and wisdom.

Enough Said

Opens Friday, September 27th

Ridgeway Cinema Grill