Master filmmaker Sidney Lumet (The Verdict, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico) scores big with this absorbing suspense thriller. Oscar®-winner* Philip Seymour Hoffman is Andy, an overextended payroll executive who lures his younger brother, Hank (Ethan Hawke), into a larcenous scheme: the pair will rob a suburban mom-and-pop jewelry store that appears to be the quintessential easy target. The proble
Master filmmaker Sidney Lumet directs this absorbing suspense thriller about a family facing the worst enemy of all itself. Oscar®-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Andy, an overextended broker who lures his younger brother, Hank (Ethan Hawke) into a larcenous scheme: the pair will rob a suburban mom-and-pop jewelry store that appears to be the quintessential easy target. The problem is, the store owners are Andy and Hank s actual mom and pop and, when the seemingly perfect crime goes awry, the damage lands right at their doorstep. Oscar-winner Marisa Tomei plays Andy s trophy wife, who is having a clandestine affair with Hank. The stellar cast also includes Albert Finney as the family patriarch who pursues justice at all costs, completely unaware that the culprits he is hunting are his own sons. A classy, classic heist-gone-wrong drama in the tradition of The Killing and Lumet s own The Anderson Tapes, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOW YOU RE DEAD is smart enough to know that we often have the most to fear from those who are near and dear.
Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is an exceptionally dark story about a crime gone wrong and the complicated reasons behind it. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are outstanding as brothers whose mutual love-hate relationship subtly colors their agreement to rob their own parents' jewelry store, and more explicitly affects the anxious aftermath of their villainy when their mother (Rosemary Harris) ends up shot. Hoffman's steely, emotionally locked-up Andy, despite pulling down six figures as a corporate executive, is supporting an expensive drug habit while trying to leave the country with his depressed wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). Hank (Hawke), a whipped dog of low intelligence, owes back alimony and child support to his ex-spouse. Both men need money and agree to rip off their parents' business, a decision that goes awry and puts both men in various kinds of jeopardy while their mother remains comatose and their father (Albert Finney) lurches along trying to make sense of anything. Writer Kelly Masterson's screenplay employs a perhaps now-overly-familiar time-shifting tactic, jumping around the chronology of the story's events and replaying scenes from different vantage points. The effect is a little tedious but successfully deconstructs the film's drama in a way that shows how such terrible events are directly linked to family dysfunction, old wounds between parent and child, between siblings, that fester into full-blown tragedy. Eighty-three-year-old director Lumet (Serpico) employs bleached colors and scenes of blunt sexuality and violence, adding to the moral rudderlessness and banality of this airless world. If Devil feels a little reductive and insistently grim, it is also a generally persuasive work by an old master. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Marisa Tomei:
Yeah, ya gotta buy this film for the Marisa Tomei scenes. The storyline, acting, etc. is just okay. Actually, the plot left me bored. But the Marisa Tomei scenes...
Into a nightmarish vortex...:
"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" is directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, The Verdict, Dog Day Afternoon). Lumet uses a structure of story telling whereby the events before and after a robbery are told like an eddy in time that swirls around the disastrous pivotal event of the robbery. Time is used like a net that entangles events together as we learn of the circumstances that lead the two brothers, played by Ethan Hawke and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, to plot the robbery. Through Lumet's mesmerizing... more info
Corny and stupid:
Martin Scorcese said that directing is a young man's game. Clint Eastwood seems to be the contradiction, and this seems to be the proof of that statement. Phil Hoffman is supposed to be a cokehead AND a junkie? He doesn't have one believable moment in this flabby and out of touch film. Everything happens in a Hollywood-universe of cliches and over-acting. Marisa Tomei has very nice breasts, though.
Genius film by 83-yr-old director:
The pacing, cinema style, storyline, acting, cutting, directing and overall look of this are stunning. At age 83, Lumet ("Dog Day Afternoon" etc) makes a movie like a 30-year-old would. Hoffman and Hawke are perfectly dysfunctional brothers here. Finney, the old pro as the father, is stunning. The plot is just convoluted enough and the tactic of replaying scenes through the now-familiar concept of time-shifting works very well. There's an operatic quality to the film, and of course, a Shakespearean tragedy... more info
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