Before The Devil Knows You`re Dead

I was very shocked by this movie, directed by Sidney Lumet, for its violence and coldness,and its rejection of the nuclear family, which is unwoven here with the kind of realism that you only see in tabloid journalism. Philip Seymour Hoffman could not have played a colder pickle, and when he is zonked on heroin and further rationalizing his capers, a chilly wind blew over me. The most striking aspect to this, was the weaving of flashbacks in, that continued to give you little bits of pertinent data, always subjective, but always drawing you into the womb of the conspiracy, until you finally felt like you were in on it. Two films came to mind for me, "A Simple Plan", and the Coen Brothers` "Blood Simple". I am really looking forward to their new one, "No Country For Old Men", by the way. "Before The Devil..." is just the film I have been waiting for all this year, but so far have only seen luckwarm product. The way you are gradually given little tidbits of information about the jewel robbery, is exactly the way you hear about incidents in real life. You are given small fragments of evidence, and you have to try to fit it into the puzzle, if you can...sometimes you can`t. As this starts to unfold, it gets more and more violent and abusive. What people will do to get their hands on some loot is outragious. Hoffman`s role as a cold, calculating fuck-up may get him an Oscar. One thing that comes to mind is the JFK Assassination, where you look at the Zapruder film, then the Nix film, then still photos, then you read testimonies...then you rewind all the tapes and look at it again, knowing that you probably overlooked something. This is what Sidney Lumet does here as a simple plan goes haywire!

11/13/2007 If you want to see a perfect film this year, go see "Before the Devil Knows You`re Dead. I read a number of reviews this morning on Rotten Tomatoes, and some of the best known critics have poured sincere praise on this film. I printed three of these reviews; the one by Carina Chocano of the LA Times, J. Hoberman`s of the Village Voice, and Richard Schickel`s of Time. The screenplay by Kelly Masterson is really perfect. The way he keeps repeating the crime scenario over again, but modulating the nuances of data, is completely original...very ingenious indeed. Also, the acting that Sidney Lumet gets out of these people is the best possible... Ethan Hawke`s as the squirrley younger brother to Hoffman seems real. Marisa Tomei plays a plaything-bunny, the cardboard wife of Andy (PSH), who is more aligned with the brother Hank, and she cooly does her thing with icy abandon. The father, Albert Finney, seems like King Lear in Shakespeare tragedy, but of the seedy suburban jewelry store variety, if you can see the connection? Richard Schickel makes the point of the toppling over of family values. I saw this too...in fact the family is the root of the problem...this is a hard pill to swallow, and makes this story all the more a hubrus for each of us individually! Unless something better comes along by December 31st, this will be my number one for 2007!
The murky notion of family values takes the A train here and gets off at the wrong stop too!