Image Entertainment | 2007 | 117 mins | Rated R | Apr 15, 2008
A family faces the worst enemy of all — itself. Andy is an overextended broker who lures his younger brother, Hank 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.
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.
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Product Details
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Rosemary Harris
Sidney Lumet
AC-3, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen
English
English SDH, Spanish
Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
1.85:1
1
Rated R
Image Entertainment
April 15, 2008
117 minutes
70 Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews
Dark, Overlooked, and Full of Outstanding Performances
By Kasey Driscoll, (Raynham, MA United States) - May 29, 2008
Directed by the great Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, 12 Angry Men), this is a dark heist drama about terribly corrupt people. Fairly ordinary in its theme these days but Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is remarkably deep in engaging and underrated performances. The cast includes Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney, Brian O’Byrne, Amy Ryan, and of course the amazing Philip Seymour Hoffman in a role worthy of incredibly high praise, especially considering how unique the role is for Hoffman, who normally plays characters with a small fraction of the presence and confidence he has here. He is actually intimidating in some scenes which is a far cry from his equally engaging performances in Capote or Love Liza.
Hoffman is Andy Hanson, an executive of seemingly solid repute, who has embezzled from his employer and is about to be audited. He needs money to make up for the losses due to his theft. Either that or he needs money to run far away from the law. He convinces his brother Hank (Hawke), who is also in need of money for his own reasons, to plan an armed robbery on a jewelry store. The moral dilemma here is that the jewelry store belongs to and is run by their parents. The plan fails in ways I won’t reveal and eventually leads to various forms of further descent for the two characters. Albert Finney plays the father of Andy and Hank.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is shot on high definition video and it is one of the first times I’ve seen the format used this effectively for a fairly low-budget feature length film. I guess even at 83 years old, Lumet is still evolving as a filmmaker, albeit the subject matter is still pretty consistent. He understands the technical end and he has always known how to tell a good story on film. The quick release on Blu-Ray was also welcome and of course consistent with the move to film on high definition.
The story is told in various segments that bounce back and forth in time surrounding and during the events mentioned in the brief summary above. This was probably done to show the various character’s perspectives on the events and was pretty effective for that. The movie was made on Lumet’s own terms and that is something I can respect, but what made it surprising to me was the power of the characters and the performances of the actors in their roles. It really is a highlight on the resumes of all the actors involved and that is saying something for the likes of Finney, Hawke, and Hoffman. It is dark and has its own pace but I definitely recommend seeing Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.
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