Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)

Before the Devil... is a gripping melodrama, the last film directed by a true American master, then 83 year old Sidney Lumet. It has a terrific script in the classic film noir vein, a stellar cast, it's filmed with precision and intensity, and is full of truth and is never predictable. The story of brothers, both at the end of their ropes financially and personally, who are driven to pull off a heist (they are not professional crooks) on the jewelry shop of their own parents. After the heist goes terribly wrong, things spin further and further out of control. What is amazing is that just as you think things can't get worse for the boys, it keeps going further and further downhill, to almost unbearable levels. Phillip Seymore Hoffman is the mastermind behind the operation, in a failing marriage with Marisa Tomei, addicted to heroin, having stolen from his company and living in a world of hurt. His brother, Ethan Hawke, ostensibly even more of a loser, is a divorced dad owing months of alimony to his angry ex (Amy Ryan) and sleeping with his brother's wife. Rosemary Harris and Albert Finney are the parents, who have more love for each other than for their ne'er do well sons. Look out for up and comer Michael Shannon as a sleazy blackmailer and the excellent Brian O'Byrne who is the dupe who is enlisted to pull off the heist. All are excellent, but I'd like to single out the tragic, surprising performance of the great Albert Finney as a confilcted, flawed, and angry patriarch. Tomei is great (looking, too she's often naked) but the script gives her less depth than the other characters. Hawke and Hoffman are the core of the film, and both do excellent, if characteristic work. Hoffman plays a bit more of an evil cad then he normally plays, and Hawke is his character in Training Day, gone sweaty and middle aged. The extreme elements set up by the script are hugely over the top, but it works, because of the supremely committed, intense and true acting and the total believability of the identifably banal settings (Westchester county and NYC) and the flawed human characters. The film has similarities to Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon, but it has much more melodrama, in the most positive spin of that word. This film stands in the Lumet canon alongside Dog Day, Network, Serpico, and 12 Angry Men, and does not seem like the work of an octagenarian. It's well worth your time.