Before the Devil Knows Youre Dead
[Blu-ray] starring Rosemary Harris,
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan
Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney
Great Movie
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 Mastersons screenplay employs a perhaps now-
overly-familiar time-shifting tactic, jumping around the chronology of the
storys events and replaying scenes from different vantage points. The
effect is a little tedious but successfully deconstructs the films 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
What happens when two veteran directors make two similarly themed
movies, each focusing on two brothers planning the perfect crime?
Predictably, in each case, it all goes horribly wrong. However, only in
Sidney Lumets Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, is that a good thing.
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke (along with Albert Finney and
Marisa Tomei) make Lumets botched robbery caper consistently intriguing
and suspenseful. In the case of Woody Allens Cassandras Dream, the
brothers-in-crime story is botched in every way imaginable -- with a
disastrous script and wooden performances by Ewan McGregor and Colin
Farrell. The plots and the packaging are similar. But one you will
remember. The other youll want to forget.
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