Movie Review - 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead'

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Rated R

The career of director Sidney Lumet is impossible to sum up in just a few words. It's hard, too, to sum it up just by listing the movies that comprise his impressive filmography, but here goes:

12 Angry Men, Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Equus, The Verdict.

The list doesn't end in 1982 with The Verdict, although Lumet's Hall of Fame credentials likely do.

Or did.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead revitalizes the 83-year-old filmmaker, giving him, if nothing else, at least one more defiant artistic rebel yell.

A botched heist movie, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead features a marvelous cast, highlighted by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei and Rosemary Harris, caught in a world that's so depressing, you wonder how people crawled into it in the first place, but not how they can't crawl out.

Lumet has looked for universal themes in his best, most thought provoking films. He has wanted to say something about our society and how to better it through his work like 12 Angry Men and Network. But the light at the end of the tunnel is awfully dim here. And still there is a humor in it, a very, very dark humor wrung out of Hoffman's magnificent portrayal as one of the most despicable characters you'll ever meet. If he weren't so stupid, you'd hate him even more.

Lumet's previous effort, Find Me Guilty, lacked an awareness of its place and time. It seemed like a courtroom comedy from the late 1980s, where the witness stand is populated by Italian stereotypes and the deflating, mawkish comedy masquerading as a storyline obscured the point, whatever it was. It was not the work of a director with purpose.

Here, and for the first time in 20 years or better, Lumet challenges himself to tell a story with teeth, consequences and a black soul. And he wins.