Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Directed by: Sidney Lumet
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney
Rated: R for a scene of strong graphic sexuality, nudity, violence, drug use and language.
Parental Notes: This movie definitely deserves its R rating and is not suitable for youngsters.
“Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” is a film about bad people doing bad things and the chain of catastrophic events that follows. It’s a grand crime melodrama which is difficult to describe without ruining its well-crafted surprises. I am a firm believer that a good movie isn’t ruined by spoilers, but this film’s surprises are so well-crafted, I won’t spoil them for you.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (“Capote”) and Ethan Hawke (“Fast Food Nation”) star as brothers Andy and Hank. They both need money, but for different reasons. Andy has a high paying job, but he also has a serious drug habit and a wife with expensive tastes. Hank is way behind on child support payments to his angry ex-wife (Amy Ryan, “Gone Baby Gone”) and doesn’t want to tell his daughter that he can’t even afford to pay for her class trip to see “The Lion King.”
Andy is the smart, amoral one, and he’s the one who comes up with the plan: the two of them can solve all their problems by robbing a mom-and-pop jewelry store out in the suburbs. The plan looks foolproof on paper, but Hank lacks Andy’s steel resolve and that will be the pair’s downfall.
Hoffman’s Andy has so much repressed rage smouldering underneath his determinedly relaxed exterior that when he finally does lose control, it’s with an air of inevitability. The film’s opening sequence, a passionate sex scene in a Rio hotel, lets us see Andy’s passion and desire to make his wife Gina (Marisa Tomei, “Wild Hogs”) happy before we watch him devolve into a violent criminal. Hoffman’s performance is subtly shaded, made up of vocal inflections and hints of facial expression, and it is a joy to watch.
Hawke is equally phenomenal as spineless Hank, the baby of the family. He’s susceptible to his brother’s manipulations as well as to his own lack of inner strength. He loves people — his daughter, his parents, even his brother — but doesn’t have the guts to behave admirably toward them. Hawke shows us Hank’s good heart under his incompetent exterior and makes the man almost likeable.
The deeper into the film we get, the more obvious it becomes how two such different men grew out of the same family. Their parents, Charles (Albert Finney, “The Bourne Ultimatum”) and Nanette (Rosemary Harris, “Spider-Man 3”), are kind and gentle on the surface, but as the film goes on that surface is peeled away and we get to see what lies beneath.
“Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” is not for everyone. It’s a quiet, character-driven film punctuated by loud, sudden violence. Three years after his Lifetime Achievement award, Sidney Lumet still has it.