The Drop and the Gray Character

I love Tom Hardy. And not just because he’s Bane. Though that does play a factor.

Come again?

 I was recently talking to my friend about The Drop (Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini). I love bouncing opinions and ideas off of this friend of mind, because she has this uncanny ability to pick out impressive points an sum them up in a way so sharp it sometimes makes me dizzy. I told her about my favorite part of the movie (which I may have mostly memorized) at the end (Spoilers! Ye be warned);

"It’s like the Devil’s just waiting for your body to quit, because he knows he already owns your soul.

Then I think maybe there is no devil. You die and God says ‘No, no you can’t come in. You have to leave now. You have to leave and go away and you have to be alone forever.’"

I told my friend that the striking ending of the The Drop is actually made more impressive by the fact that the events leading up to the climax are somewhat mundane. Tom Hardy plays an adorable, mumbling Bostonian barkeep caring for an abused puppy, with a quiet nature that appears generally good, though with something strangely unsettling in his demeanor. And then . . .

“I shot him in the face, twice. Then I wrapped his head in a towel, and I stabbed him in the chest, in his heart, so he would bleed out, and I put him in my bathtub and watched him drain. Then I put him in an oil tank with laundry detergent and lye, and I sealed it back up.”

Yes, I killed him. Absolutely. He was gonna hurt our dog.

            Then quiet, unsuspecting Tom Hardy shoots a guy in the face. Whoa.

I told my friend about all this. 

                “I get why you like that movie,” she said, nodding. “He’s like Zensor. He’s the guy that does bad things that you want to believe is good.”

                Whoa. And all this time I thought she didn’t really read my books.

                She was 100% right. I’ve always been strangely draw to that character archetype; the “gray” character, the hero who does bad things and the villain who tries to do good things. Zensor is a bit of both, just like Tom Hardy. 

Soldier Sons the movie: starring Tom Hardy as Zensor

Why are the gray men so appealing? They’re people we can relate to. They’re gentle, they’re protective, they’re loving and loyal. They’re violent, they’re mean, they’re capricious and cruel. They’re guilty, they’re remorseful, they’re bad and they wish they weren’t.

               Aren't we all?

              "Nothing is easier than denouncing an evil-doer. 

               And nothing more difficult than understanding him."

              --Dostoevsky