Before the Devil Knows You're Dead [Blu-ray]

This is a thoroughly diabolical tale of just how bad things can go wrong. A simple robbery. Pick up some serious change. Get our finances together and everything will be hunky-dory. But--mom and pop's jewelry store? No problem. Insurance pays for it all. No guns. Nobody gets hurt. Easy money.

Older, more successful (it would appear) brother Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has a few minor problems. Heroin addiction, cocaine habituation. A wife (Marisa Tomei) that...well, he can't seem to perform for. His flat belly days long gone. Younger, sweet, slightly dim-witted younger brother, Hank (Ethan Hawke) with a few dinero problems of his own. Behind in child support payments for his daughter, in debt to friends and relatives, not exactly wowing them in the work of work, etc.

Sydney Lumet, in this performance at the age of 82 (!), directs and gets it 99.99 percent right, which is hard to do in a thriller. I have seen more thrillers than I can remember and most of the time the director gets the movie printed and lives with the plot holes, the improbabilities, the cheesy scenes, and the hurry-up ending. Here Lumet makes a thriller like it's a work of art. Every detail is perfect. The acting is superb. The plot has no holes. The story rings true and clear and represents a tale about human frailty that would honor the greatest filmmakers and even the Bard himself.

Hoffman of course is excellent. When you don't have marquee, leading man presence, you have to get by on talent, workmanship and pure concentration. Ethan Hawke, who is no stranger to the sweet, little guy role, adds a layer of desperation and all too human incompetence to the part so that we don't know whether to pity him or trash him. Albert Finney plays the father of the wayward sons with a kind of steely intensity that belies his age. And Marisa Tomei, who has magical qualities of sexiness to go along with her unique creativity, manages to be both vulnerable and hard as nails as Andy's two timing wife. (But who could blame her?)

It's almost a movie reviewer's sacrilege to give a commercial thriller five or ten stars, but if you study this film, as all aspiring film makers would be well advised to do, you will notice the kind of excessive (according to most Hollywood producers) attention to detail that makes for real art--the sort of thing that only great artists can do, and indeed cannot help but do. (By the way, I think there were twenty producers on this film--well, maybe a dozen; check the credits.) All I can say in summation is, Way to go Sydney Lumet, author of a slew of excellent films, and to show such fidelity to your craft and your art at such an advanced age--kudos. May we all do half so well.

Okay, the 00.01 percent. It was unlikely that the father (Albert Finney) could have followed the cabs that Andy took around New York without somehow losing the tail. This is minor, and I wish all thrillers could have so small a blip. Also one wonders why Lumet decided not to tell us about the fate of Hank at the end. We can guess and guess. Perhaps his fate fell onto the cutting room floor. Perhaps Lumet was not satisfied with what was filmed and time ran out, and he just said, "Leave it like that. It really doesn't matter."

And I think it doesn't. What happens to Hank is not going to be good. He isn't the kind of guy who manages to run off to Mexico and is able to start a new life. He is the kind of guy who gets a "light" sentence of 10 to 20 and serves it and comes out a kind of shrunken human being who knows he wasn't really a man when he should have been.

See this for Sidney Lumet, one of Hollywood's best, director of The Pawnbroker (1964), The Group (1966), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976), and many more.

Brothers Andy (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke) are in desperate need of money and come up with a fool-proof way to get it: They'll rob a small jewelry store. The catch: It's their parents' store.

Wow. I'll say it again: Wow. This movie is the most powerful and exciting film I've seen in a long time. The acting is outstanding, the script is clever and full of surprises, and the direction by Sidney Lumet is superb. Supporting the two stars are Albert Finney as their father and Marissa Tomei as Andy's wife. They are both excellent. The story reminded me a lot of A Simple Plan which also had two greedy brothers with a can't-miss scheme that quickly and tragically becomes a nightmare. This movie is so intense, I was often saying, "Yikes!" to myself and holding my breath a lot. It's that good.

The only thing I didn't like is the way the story constantly goes back and forth in flashbacks; I don't think that added anything and was a bit frustrating for me. But still, if you like emotional crime dramas, you'll love this movie. Explicit sexuality and non-stop profanity.

First I need to point out this film is definitely not a feelgood film, it's very dark, downbeat and, ultimately, very sad. Two brothers with major financial problems decide to carry out a financial scam involving the robbery of their own parent's jewellery store. The idea is the brainchild of the older brother, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and when he first pitches it to his younger brother, Ethan Hawke, he has to do quite a lot of persuading to convince him. In the end they both agree that such a risky and desperate scam is realistically the only way to get them both out of their current dire financial straits. It's a decision that ends up having a profound and tragic effect on them and their family's lives.

The cast and acting in this film is top notch and the performances are very convincing. Philip Seymour Hoffman is excellent playing the high-flier who has lost control of his life and seems to be failing in everything he does. His easily influenced and more wayward brother is also well played by Ethan Hawke, reluctantly following the lead of his older brother. Albert Finney is also superb playing the father who slowly starts to piece together the threads of his son's shocking plan.

When the arranged robbery goes wrong, a domino effect starts where one disaster leads onto another reactionary disaster and soon the brothers lives start to fall apart, dragging down many other people with them. As things spiral more and more out of control the brothers actions get increasingly more extreme as they battle to keep control of the unfolding events around them. More and more people get dragged into this vicious circle until their father realises what has happened and things take a tragic turn for the worst.

As this emotional whirlwind unravels you can't help but feel for sorry for the two brothers as matters go horribly awry in ways they never could have imagined. Whilst you rue their utter stupidity in involving themselves in such a criminal and high risk course of action, you kind of empathise with the desperation that can drive people to forego common sense in pursuit of a 'quick fix' solution to their problems. The film dramatically shows how foolish and compulsive actions can lead to tragedy, and how the instigators of these irrational actions are often just as much the victims as the perpetrators.