 | |
List Price: $35.98 | | Label: Image Entertainment
Salesrank: 23221
Released: April 15, 2008 |
| Our Price: $8.55 |
| Used Price: $8.09 |
|
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Blu-ray |
|
Editorial Review:
Master filmmaker Sidney Lumet directs this absorbing suspense thriller about a family facing the worst enemy of all itself. Oscar®-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Andy, an overextended broker who lures his younger brother, Hank (Ethan Hawke) into a larcenous scheme: the pair will rob a suburban mom-and-pop jewelry store that appears to be the quintessential easy target. The problem is, the store owners are Andy and Hank s actual mom and pop and, when the seemingly perfect crime goes awry, the damage lands right at their doorstep. Oscar-winner Marisa Tomei plays Andy s trophy wife, who is having a clandestine affair with Hank. The stellar cast also includes Albert Finney as the family patriarch who pursues justice at all costs, completely unaware that the culprits he is hunting are his own sons. A classy, classic heist-gone-wrong drama in the tradition of The Killing and Lumet s own The Anderson Tapes, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOW YOU RE DEAD is smart enough to know that we often have the most to fear from those who are near and dear.
Description of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead [Blu-ray]:
Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is an exceptionally dark story about a crime gone wrong and the complicated reasons behind it. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are outstanding as brothers whose mutual love-hate relationship subtly colors their agreement to rob their own parents’ jewelry store, and more explicitly affects the anxious aftermath of their villainy when their mother (Rosemary Harris) ends up shot. Hoffman’s steely, emotionally locked-up Andy, despite pulling down six figures as a corporate executive, is supporting an expensive drug habit while trying to leave the country with his depressed wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). Hank (Hawke), a whipped dog of low intelligence, owes back alimony and child support to his ex-spouse. Both men need money and agree to rip off their parents' business, a decision that goes awry and puts both men in various kinds of jeopardy while their mother remains comatose and their father (Albert Finney) lurches along trying to make sense of anything. Writer Kelly Masterson's screenplay employs a perhaps now-overly-familiar time-shifting tactic, jumping around the chronology of the story's events and replaying scenes from different vantage points. The effect is a little tedious but successfully deconstructs the film's drama in a way that shows how such terrible events are directly linked to family dysfunction, old wounds between parent and child, between siblings, that fester into full-blown tragedy. Eighty-three-year-old director Lumet (Serpico) employs bleached colors and scenes of blunt sexuality and violence, adding to the moral rudderlessness and banality of this airless world. If Devil feels a little reductive and insistently grim, it is also a generally persuasive work by an old master. --Tom Keogh
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead [Blu-ray] Reviews:
Genius film by 83-yr-old director 
2009-11-27 - The pacing, cinema style, storyline, acting, cutting, directing and overall look of this are stunning. At age 83, Lumet ("Dog Day Afternoon" etc) makes a movie like a 30-year-old would. Hoffman and Hawke are perfectly dysfunctional brothers here. Finney, the old pro as the father, is stunning. The plot is just convoluted enough and the tactic of replaying scenes through the now-familiar concept of time-shifting works very well. There's an operatic quality to the film, and of course, a Shakespearean tragedy going on as the family implodes after the brothers' decision to rob their parents' bland suburban jewelry store. I'd overlooked this upon release. Don't make the same mistake now. Watch!
Dark, Intelligent Melodrama 
2009-10-26 - This movie hits hard, especially in today's miserable economy. Two brothers, desperate for money for different reasons, plot to rob their parents' suburban jewelry store. The brothers have grown up in the business so they know how to fence the jewels, they know their way around the store and its schedule, and the parents are insured, so the brothers will get what they need (or think they need) and no harm done. Of course it all goes horribly wrong. The story is old hat but the story-telling structure is thought-provoking, the visual style unobtrusively perfect, and the acting excellent all around, particularly Albert Finney. The audience is challenged to think about the choices we make, what really matters to us, what we might be driven to, and how we delude ourselves that if we can just surmount this or that obstacle, we'll be in clover. The bonus feature about the making of the film is interesting. However, this is uniformly dark, perhaps Lumet's bleakest work since "The Pawnbroker." Don't go looking for anything fun or life-affirming. It's easy to see why this was not a big financial success.
a good performace
2009-10-16 - The title has a basic history, than make remember about the feelings was everyone have inside
"The Pawnbroker" Redux
2009-10-11 - When you have made as many classic films as Sidney Lumet has, self-conscious filmmaking
stops eons ago. You know a pro when you see a film that does not flash across
each scene: "Wow, look at my editing, look at my script, look at my mise-en-scene,
look at my cinematography, etc., etc...." This is such a film. This is not a collage
of pretty scenes, neat editing and fancy dialogue (which describes 90 % of art-house film
today). This is, in some ways, a conservative film with an almost Art-Deco minimalist and realist
stylism without the wink-wink nod-nod that has, on occasion, even afflicted a Scorsese film
(and all-too-often Coen Brothers films) and has made Tarantino completely unwatchable.
The always topnotch and realible score by Carter Burwell is near perfect. There are many
good postmodern crime and film-noir movies produced in the past 10-20 years; what makes this
film so good is the deft hand of a pro who need not reaffirm any cinematically credibility
that may have been questioned in the past. He doesn't need to and moreover he doesn't care.
Great Character Study
2009-09-28 - Andy Hanson (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) have financial problems. Hank's ex-wife never lets up about the child support he owes and Andy has been embezzling money from his company. Andy's wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei) is depressed and pressures him to move to Brazil, where she believes all their troubles will be over. She's also having an affair with Hank. Andy devises a scheme to steal from their parents' small jewelry store and convinces Hank to perform the burglary. Hank, however, persuades one of his friends to do the actual robbery. Although neither of the brothers expect their mother to be working at the store that morning, she is there, covering for the woman who is supposed to be working. Things go awry from the start and Hank's friend and his mother fatally shoot each other.
Hank has trouble dealing with his mother's death and Andy tries to come to terms over the part he played in her death and the hatred he harbors for his dad. Hank and Andy are fearful of being caught and when Andy learns the IRS is auditing his department, he panics and, from that point on, his life spins out of control.
Excellent acting by Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The movie moves at a fast pace and switches from backstory to the present with ease. Albert Finney puts in a fine performance as the dad and Marisa Tomei, as always, does well in her part.
