Review of the Movie Before the Devil Knows Youre Dead
Sidney Lumet'southward "Before the Devil Knows You're Expressionless" is such a superb crime melodrama that I almost want to leave information technology at that. To just finish writing correct now and advise y'all to go out and see it as soon as you lot can. I and so much want to avoid revealing plot points that I don't fifty-fifty desire to take chances my usual strategy of oblique hints. You lot deserve to walk into this i cold.
Yet that would prevent my praise, and there is so much to praise most this picture show. Let me try to discussion this carefully. The motion picture stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke equally brothers -- yes, brothers, considering although they may non look related, they always feel as if they share a long and fraught history. Hoffman plays Andy, a payroll executive who dresses well and e'er has every hair slicked into place, only has a bad drug habit and an urgent need to raise some greenbacks. Hawke plays Hank, much lower on the financial totem pole, with his ain reasons for needing money; he can't face his little girl and admit he can't afford to pay for her form outing to attend "The Lion Rex." Hank looks more like the druggie, but you never can tell.
Andy suggests they solve their problems past robbing a jewelry shop. And not merely any jewelry store, but find out for yourself. He has it all mapped out every bit a victimless crime: They won't use guns, they'll hitting early Sat when the shopping mall doesn't have customers, the store's losses will be covered by insurance, and then on. Sounds expert on paper, before everything goes wrong. And that'south when the motion picture becomes intense and emotionally devastating.
These two brothers are capable of feeling emotions rare in modernistic crime films: grief and remorse. They cave in with regret. And they still demand money; Andy learns that when you are heartbroken it is bad enough, but even worse when your legs may be broken, too. Meanwhile, their dozy father (Albert Finney) starts looking into the case himself, and that leads to a conversation with 1 son that Eugene O'Neill couldn't have written whatsoever better.
The film fully establishes the families involved. Finney has been married forever to Rosemary Harris, and still loves her to pieces. Hoffman is married to Marisa Tomei, who merely keeps on getting sexier as she grows older so very slowly. Hawke is divorced from Amy Ryan, who would happily see him in jail for non-payment of child support. Although the moving picture opens with Hoffman and Tomei ecstatically making love in Rio (say what you will nigh the big guy, Hoffman looks to exist an energetic and capable lover), their marriage is far from perfect.
The Japanese name some of their artists Living Treasures. Sidney Lumet is i of ours. He has made more great pictures than most directors have made pictures, and found time to make some clunkers on the side. Hither he takes a story that is, afterward all, pretty straightforward, and tells information technology in an ingenious mode we might telephone call narrative interruptus. The brilliant debut screenplay by Kelly Masterson takes us up to a sure point, and so flashes back to before that bespeak, and then catches us up again, and then doubles back, so that it meticulously reconstructs how spectacularly and inevitably this perfect crime went wrong.
And it doesn't simply go incorrect, it goes incorrect with an backwash we intendance nigh. This isn't a motion-picture show where the crime is only a plot, and dead bodies are only plot devices. Its story has deeply emotional consequences. That's why an actor with Albert Finney's depth is needed for an apparently supporting role. If he isn't at that place when he'south needed, the whole film loses. As for Hoffman and Hawke, so seemingly unlike but such intelligent actors, they pull off that miracle that makes us stop thinking of anything we know about them, and start thinking simply of Andy and Hank.
This is a pic, I promise you, that grabs you lot and won't let you think of anything else. It'south wonderful when a director like Lumet wins a Lifetime Accomplishment Oscar at fourscore, and three years later makes 1 of his greatest achievements.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his decease in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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Before the Devil Knows Yous're Dead (2007)
117 minutes
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