Mad Max Resurrects Travis Bickle in "The Drop"

"I'm dying to do the sequel." "VEEERRRY funny."

 I  n 1976, Martin Scorsese gave movie-goers the ultimate anti-hero—a psychopathic, sympathetic, socially incompatible Vietnam veteran taxi driver named Travis Bickle who was determined to rid the streets of New York City of the filth that had contaminated it, turning 13-year-old girls into hookers complete with pimps and other lowlifes that seemed to infest the streets of Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx. 

Over the last forty years, filmmakers have tried in vain to replicate Scorsese's ability to create a character audiences could both fear and root for, a character who did bad things which were justifiable; someone imperfect, lonely, who could not fit in. It would seem that the creativity and sympathy that was omnipresent in films of the 70s have been replaced by special effects and sequels and directors with more money than brains. Not so with a sleeper of a film called The Drop from 2014, in which an actor (Tom Hardy) proves he can indeed act without having to wear a mask and disguise his voice (Bane from The Dark Night Rises), or be strapped to the hood of a car with another mask on in another ludicrous sequel: Mad Max Fury Road. 

The Drop tells the story of a small bar in Brooklyn where Bob (Hardy) Saginowski (funny, his name was Max Rockatansky in Fury Road) serves the drinks under the watchful eye of his cousin Marv (played by the great James Gandolfini in his last role before he died), who lost ownership of the bar to a bunch of Chechen mobsters 10 years ago. 

"Cousin Marv's" serves as a frequent "drop" where thousands of illegal dollars are dumped off on special occasions like Superbowl Sunday—the kind of money that is not declared to the IRS—so that it can be collected by a bunch of well-dressed criminals who will surely bolt your leg to the floor of a van, let you bleed out, chop off your arm, and throw you in a river somewhere if you even dare rob from them. 

After two morons decide to do just that and end up stealing $5,000 from the bar, Bob, a stalky and quiet figure who seems unfazed after the thieves had a gun pointed at his head, finds a small pit-bull puppy in a garbage can on his way home. The garbage can's owner Nadia (Noomi Rapace from Prometheus) and Bob decide to take care of the dog, build a friendship, and Bob takes the dog home and raises it. Lo and behold, Nadia has quite a few problems including a suicide attempt and an old nutjob boyfriend, "Eric," who claims he was the dog's rightful owner but decided to beat it and leave it to die in the garbage. Eric is abusive, volatile and seems to want to harm Nadia and the dog but gets a little more than he bargained for after he meets Bob. 

Bob goes to church every day but never gets communion. He is able to cover up appendages which would otherwise be evidence for the police by wrapping them up and throwing them in the river without so much as working up a sweat; he plays with his dog, works nights at the bar and serves as protector to Nadia. Throughout the film he claims he just "tends bar" when being questioned by a detective searching for those who robbed "Cousin Marv's" but he does quite a bit more than that. He is explosive and capable of great violence when Nadia and the dog are threatened, yet, he is likeable. 

Many of The Drop's scenes are filmed at night in a middle-lower class Brooklyn neighborhood and the music accompanying them is very reminiscent of Bernard Hermann's darker parts of Taxi Driver. 

Originally a short story called "Animal Rescue," The Drop tells a simple story of an "ordinary" man who is a bartender, much like the ordinary job Travis Bickle had as a taxi driver, who is imperfect and alone but when pushed, will push back. He is vulnerable yet violent, a criminal with ethics and morals that audiences love to watch. 

A pity it has taken 40 years for us to see such a magnetic persona come to life in a movie that nobody saw. 

Check it out on Netflix!