Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Eh.

2007

Review: February 19, 2008

Director: Sidney Lumet

Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Rosemary Harris

Not really.

THE SETUP:

Two brothers try to pull a con that ends up going really, really badly

DISCUSSION:

This is one of those things my friend and I had heard was really good, so we made a special effort to see it before it left theaters. In retrospect we could have skipped it.

We open with Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Andy fucking his wife, Marisa Tomei, in a hotel room. They are on vacation in Rio, and they talk about how they can have great, exciting sex in Rio on vacation, while at home things are pretty much deadsville. Then we see a holdup of a small strip-mall jewelry store, where the older woman [Rosemary Harris] who owns it shoots the robber, and he shoots her, leaving her in critical condition. In the parking lot, we see Ethan Hawke as Hank freak out and speed away. Then we flash back a few days.

It seems it was Andy, who works at some sort of high-powered investment or real-estate agency or something, recruited his shiftless brother Hank to hold up the jewelry store of their own parents, having information that some other woman would be working in the store that morning, i.e. not their mother. Hank, sort of perpetual loser, recruits this waiter—an obvious loose cannon from the start—to do the actual crime.

So we're flashing back and forth, from this person's perspective then from that person's perspective, slowly piecing things together. My friend and I had a discussion afterward about how this method of telling stories gives stories that don't otherwise have a lot of energy some additional intrigue. The downside is that, once the movie's over and you've sorted out everything in your head, the whole thing can seem much more slight than it seemed while watching, and reflect poorly on the movie. The long and the short of it here is that the waiter dude gets killed and later his girlfriend calls in a thug to shake Hank down for some money. Meanwhile Andy has debts of his own and he's estranged from his wife and stress is mounting exponentially at work, where he is snorting coke between meetings and running off to the drug den of this semi-transsexual… oh, it's a wild world out there.

All of which is not to mention their dealings with their father, played by Albert Finney, who does not react well to his wife's death, and is hell-bent on bringing the scumbags who did it to justice. So you have the two sons trying to console dad and deal with their own feelings while also trying to cover their tracks and make sure none of the evidence leads back to them. So that's the stew, they set it up, then just keep stirring.

Both my friend and I—and this stranger who stopped to ask us what we thought of it—were left a little underwhelmed. The writing is good, the performances are good, the direction is unexceptional, but after a while the story just isn't all that compelling, and the focus is more on how desperate these people's lives are than any kind of resolution. And as the movie goes on, the characters become more and more desperate, to the point where they couldn't possibly think they have any chance of getting away with their plans, and one in the audience grows from intrigued and involved to ever-more distant, wondering where this could possibly be going. There is the supposed "shocking" ending—be sure to be shocked, okay?—and it's over.

Phhht. This movie didn't do much for me but pass time. The story didn't have much resonance for me, and didn't leave me thinking about much except how implausible it all was and how significantly interest would be reduced if the story was told chronologically. Sure it has good performances and decent writing, but as they say, that and $4 will get you a Happy Meal.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

If you want, but I think it could be safely skipped.