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"The Drop" DVD
Join me for Tarantino
Ripoff Theatre! This week's featured title, the upcoming soon to
be languishing on video store shelves because no one in their right
mind would rent it twice masterwork, "The Drop"!
So what we have here
is the positively baffling story of Carter Wilson, a twenty six
year old graduate student studying architecture and trying to keep
things working with his fiancee of three years, Triste. Carter,
like pretty much every college student ever, needs money. So when
he gets a plum job offer, driving a luxury sports car from northern
California to the wilds of Los Angeles for five grand, he does so
happily. Now, already, you can spot LOADS of things wrong with this
concept.
The only people who get
paid this kind of money to transport a car are 1. drug mules or
2. coyotes full of illegal immigrants. Better still, engaged. For
three years. These are feet so cold they could be used to cool a
beer keg. The interesting part is, you're not alone in spotting
these gaffes. The plot holes are officially canon when Trista brings
them up in a phone conversation with a driving Carter.
It is probably a bad
idea to basically look at your audience and say, "Yes, we know
the script is full of plot holes. Here, let us detail for you exactly
what they are. In canon. In fact, we're not actually out to FIX
any of these problems by the end of the movie, we're just gonna
make the movie run around them."
Worse yet is the shooting
style. This movie is packed to the gills with jump cuts and flashbacks
less than one minute in duration and assorted flashFORWARDS, even,
meaning that we're going to be jumping around all over the place.
Plus, at thirty six minutes and thirteen seconds, we get an exciting
round of Fun With Visual Metaphors. The audience would be best served
here by a nice text placard reading:
"Warning: Events
Occur Having Nothing To Do With the Plot Next Minute And a Half"
But now we get to the part that really got me irritated, the Tarantino
Movie Ripoff portion of the evening. Carter, you see, is going to
get held up and assaulted by a collection of thugs with really evocative
code names, designed ostensibly to keep anyone from knowing who
they actually are. The names they go by? Mr. Zero. Mr. One. Mr.
Two. Mr. Pink. And so on. Oh wait! No! Not Mr. PINK! The hell was
I thinking--that's one of Tarantino's names! Can't use the color
scheme--Tarantino's big enough to sue! So let's just break out the
NUMBERS instead. Lovely, fellas. Tarantino can't copyright numbers,
you know. So you're at least SAFE there, if not totally spineless.
And even better, after
Carter is beset upon by the Reservoir..umm...CATS (yeah, that'll
work!), we find out just what's been going on here after all. Carter's
transporting not just a car, but also a random and all too familiar
something in a random and all too familiar briefcase. Remember "Pulp
Fiction", folks?
Oh yeah. Carter's been
transporting a mysterious briefcase full of light that causes everyone
who looks at it to go bugeyed until they shut the lid. The key difference
is that, in "The Drop" the light is BLUE. Not golden like
in "Pulp Fiction". All levity aside, folks, this is the
perfect summation of why "The Drop" is godawful: Bad plot.
Bad execution. Some elements were abducted from other, vastly better
films. The ending is even worse. They're going to try to pull this
mass of cinematic slop together into some kind of coherent form,
and much like trying to sculpt a buffalo out of chocolate pudding,
it's not gonna work real well. There are a great many unanswered
questions left behind--see if you can spot three for yourself at
home!--and no one seems to be in any great hurry to fix THAT problem
either.
The special features
were limited to a trailer for "The Drop" on the disk I
got, but that'll likely change in the full version. All in all,
"The Drop" is something I'd rather like TO drop. There's
no sense in renting this one, folks, unless you really just HAVE
to have a horror fix.
OVERALL
GRADE: One star
The Drop
*
DVD
Directed by Kevin Lewis
Written by Troy Scott, Kevin Lewis
Starring John Savage, Sean Young, Michael Bondies, Kevan Michaels
Produced by Steven Nash
2006
R
84 mins
The
Video Store Guy knows the best movies you've never seen. Check his
Reel Advice weekly at www.monstersandcritics.com
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