In the vein of Carl Franklin’s One False Move, writer director Jeremy Saulnier has produced a moody, taut and earthy thriller that bleeds authenticity. Dwight (Macon Blair) is a seemingly harmless, homeless drifter who haunts a beach town in Delaware. He eats out of the boardwalk trash cans and his crimes are petty (he breaks and enters not to steal, but to take hot baths while the homeowners are away). Dwight is well known to the authorities, one of whom takes him aside and lets him know the killer of his parents has been released from prison in Virginia. This revelation sets in motion a chain of events that brings Dwight back home to confront the killer, and his family.

Saulnier shoots the eerie back roads of Virginia in a manner that accentuates Dwight’s foggy mental state. He seems almost enveloped by a mist of doom upon returning to his childhood home. Despite the haunting, dreamlike feel of the picture, Saulnier does not glamorize the violence, which is up-close, personal and jarring.  People panic, they miss their mark, they make unbelievably stupid mistakes, and they say things under duress that people under duress actually say.

The actors are true. Blair near carries the entire film (in a fair and just world, he’d be an Academy Award nominee). We meet him insulated by the cloud of his drifter life. When he is jerked back to grim reality, we see the dawning, and the depth of the anger he has been suppressing.  When he reunites with his sister (Amy Hargreaves), the familial anger is obviously shared, but we pointedly feel her ambivalence upon the return of her troubled brother. It’s as if she worked for years to form a scab which is ripped off the moment Dwight arrives.

Saulnier’s storytelling is such that you credibly piece together the events that led to Dwight’s fresh hell, and there is no predictable satisfaction from extraction of his revenge. Instead, both he and the audience come to realize this is a slow-moving clusterfuck of a car crash from the word go.

If none of this floats your boat, I have one more pitch:  Eve Plumb (of The Brady Bunch) makes an unexpected, terrifying appearance.

One of the better pictures of the year, a deserved 96% on rottentomatoes, available streaming on Netflix and all the more impressive when you know it was done for $425,000.

The film versions of Dennis Lehane’s books Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone are excellent, but they are mythic stories about the bonds of family in a criminal world. The Drop has no such sweep. It’s a small crime film about a Brooklyn bar and the little people (James Gandolfini and Tom Hardy) who run it for the Chechen mob. When the bar is used as a “drop bar” for the mob’s money, and it is robbed, the little people are thrust into a situation they are ill-equipped to handle.

I just saw Hardy as a meticulous Welsh construction manager dealing with his crumbling life in Locke, and he was immersed in the role. But when you bring foreigners to “New Yawk” (or Biloxi, for that matter), you run the risk of the mannered, cartoonish accent and swagger of Russell Crowe in Naked City. Forget foreigners. Even Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts can succumb to the perils of “da’ street, and as anyone who has seen The Pope of Greenwich Village will attest, the sight is not pretty.

Not so with Hardy. He is comfortable with the character and the milieu and while it’s no stretch for Gandolfini to play the type, in his last role, Tony Soprano does not disappoint. Hardy is Gandolfini’s quiet second banana, either inscrutable or dim, but steady and loyal either way. As the out-of-their depth small-timers, Hardy and Gandolfini are ably supported by Noomi Rapace, the damaged local girl who binds with Hardy over an abused pit bull left in her trash can (the dog is so cute as to be unnerving; his fate becomes almost too paramount and you spend an inordinate amount of time asking, “Where’s the damn dog?”).

As good as these actors are, Matthias Schoenaerts steals the film as Rapace’s ex-boyfriend, a local hood looking to capitalize on the heist. He presents the perfect mix for a villain; terrifying, intriguing and just a little sympathetic, although you can’t put your finger on why. It’s a great performance that should be recognized come Oscar time. There is no chance that will occur.

This is Michael Roskam’s first American film, and the Belgian exhibits everything you want a new filmmaker to show. It is understated, assured in its pace, taut, organic and comfortable with the quiet moments.  Roskam feels no need to amp the action or to bolster the emotional connection between the characters. He lets the audience fill in the gaps, resulting in very poignant moments between Hardy and Gandolfini and a compelling love story between Hardy and Rapace, even though they don’t so much as kiss.

One of the best films of the year.