The Drop

The Drop (2002? 2003? 2006?) from Tuna and Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Tuna's notes

This is a direct-to-vid ... er ... thriller. A college kid is hired for a huge sum of money to drive a luxury sports car from San Francisco to LA. He is to make $5,000 for a 6-hour drive, half in advance, half when he gets there. He is to deliver it to a parking garage. Of course, we know he isn't too bright, since he didn't even question why someone would pay that much money for six hours of work in the first place.

When he arrives, he sees Sean Young walk by, and fantasizes about having sex with her, even though he plans to use the $5,000 to get married. Then he becomes bored waiting for the owner to show up, so he rifles through the glove box and finds a key which opens a briefcase containing unspeakable evil. We never get to know exactly what the evil is, but even if we did I couldn't tell you because, well, because it's unspeakable, dammit! We do know that it glows blue, and fries most people, other than Sean Young and our hero, who turns out to be "the key," and is somehow a vital link to unleashing the evil in the briefcase. He hides the case, and a mob of bad guys, including Sean Young and John Savage, chase him around the parking garage for 90 minutes, shooting at him and trying to get the briefcase from him.

It's a clear F by our grading system. Even if you restrict the genre solely to evil briefcase movies, and even if Hollywood, Bollywood and Paris make nothing else but evil briefcase films until the end of the physical universe, this will undoubtedly remain the worst of the genre for all time, unless Andrew Lloyd Webber creates Drop: The Musical.

DVD INFO (left)

NUDITY REPORT

Sean Young shows one breast in a dark, blurry sex scene.

Scoop's notes

(Read Tuna's comments first, if you have not already, then return here. These notes pick up where he stops ... )

Not only do the characters spend the entire time wandering around the parking garage, but many of the later moments in the garage consist of flashbacks to various earlier times in the garage, perhaps in a reverie of nostalgia for the cheaper rates of the previous hour, or perhaps because the editor didn't have enough footage to pad the thing out to feature length without repetition. I reckon it was the latter, since the early part of the film was filled with flash-forwards! Or maybe the entire film exists to teach us that time itself is a much more flexible concept than our weak and linear mortal minds can comprehend. Even with all the padding, the closing credits start to roll at the 80 minute mark, and that 80 minutes includes the opening title sequence and a bizarre prologue which I still don't understand.

According to IMDb, The Drop was filmed in 2002. The DVD box shows that the copyright date is 2003. I'm not surprised that it stayed hidden for all these years. This is a truly bad movie.

The Critics Vote ...

No major reviews online

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters overrate it 2.6/10

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

Our own guideline:

A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.
B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)
C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are indistinguishable to you.
C means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others probably will not.
C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film, but films with this rating should be approached with caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C- and an E are indistinguishable to you.
D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-. Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor popular acceptance.
E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre.
F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is an F. It's one that could migrate to the all-time Bottom 100 if it gets discovered.