Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

director: Sidney Lumet
year: 2007

Two brothers (Ethan Hawke & Philip Seymour Hoffman) muff a "perfect" heist of their mom and pop's (Rosemary Harris & Albert Finney) suburban jewelry store, leading to plenty of disintegration: personal, familial, physical. The older brother's wife (Marisa Tomei) adds to the "Shakespearean" traumatics.


Sidney Lumet gets old, critics get lenient. Lauded for its intense story, dark humour, and flawless performances, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a misfired satire whose messy, time-shifting script by first-time scribe Kelly Masterson gives its players ample scenery to chew (in the case of Albert Finney, quite literally, as Finney's face throughout the film is cemented into a grimace punctuated by an ever-gaping mouth) while providing no real nourishment. The saying is true, you are what you eat: Devil's characters are papery—and not least of all Masterson's most important female character, whom Lumet attempts to deepen by constantly shooting her topless. Thankfully, Marisa Tomei is far from flat; and, at 43, still justifying the sexual fantasies of George Costanza. Her scenes are the film's highlights. In terms of Lumet's own style, he renders the plot in failed long takes and snappier, sloppily-edited sequences dominated by the film's flagrant musical theme. On a few strange occasions, Lumet also violates his own still camera by slightly drifting long takes to follow on-screen action—a jarring mix of visible and invisible style that could have been avoided by slightly altered framing. It's a detail, but emblematic of an overall sloppiness that, by the time the film's final melodramatic twist culminates in a smug fade to white, makes you wonder just what the hell Lumet was aiming at: comedy, tragedy, a botched film to accompany a botched robbery? If there is a reason to celebrate Lumet's Devil, it's that, at 83, the director is still finding new ways to fail.

As the old saying goes: May you have food and raiment, a soft pillow for your head; may you see only better films, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.