***1/2 Stars
Hollywood veteran Sidney Lumet is in his eighties and is directing material that is a shadow of Quentin Tarantino. At first, I was having trouble with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead because it reminded me too much of a Tarantino film with its dialogue driven characters and playing with the order of time. So I had to stop for a moment and get that out of mind before it took away from the film. After seeing it for it was, this is a film powered by an electric performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman. Ethan Hawke tries to match his caliber and comes up short, but in a way it works here because Hawke is the weaker brother when it comes to the situations they get themselves in. The situations are two people who can be good people, but choose to do very bad things. And this is clear when the tag-line of the film is "No one was suppose to get hurt."
What makes Lumet such a great director is his patience towards camera movements. He lets things fold naturally, as if you are actually in the same room with all of his characters. The very first shot of the film feels like a sister to the sex-scene in Marc Fosters's Monsters Ball with Andrew Hanson (Hoffman) and his wife Gina (the gorgeous Marisa Tomei) on vacation having some nice animal sex. Its shocking at first, but after they finish they discuss things any normal couple talks about: happiness, fears, doubts, their future, and the fear of becoming distant. What Andy doesn't know is that Gina is also having an affair, with his brother Henry (Hawke).
Henry is a divorced man unable to pay his child support bills. So when his brother Andy proposes a jewelry store heist, it takes a small amount of convincing for him to go along with it, until he tells them that it will be their parents store they are robbing. Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris play their parents Charles and Nanette, who are just living out their final years together. They own the jewelry store with steady business and without any serious problems, until Nanette is killed in the failed heist by his brothers. Nothing was supposed to happen. No mess, no deaths, no problems. Right?
Wrong.
The two are now forced to cover their own skins, while also grieving for the death of their mother and now the emptiness of their father. Their downfall is filled with regret, mischief, betrayal, and utter tragedy. These two failed to think of the worst case scenario because they assumed that it was the perfect heist. Well in a way it was, on paper. The store would be robbed with Andy and Henry collecting the profit and the insurance covering their parents. Throughout this entire film I just thought about a quote my mother has been saying to me for literally my entire life: "Think Before You Act." That also could have been the film's tagline.
What makes Lumet such a great director is his patience towards camera movements. He lets things fold naturally, as if you are actually in the same room with all of his characters. The very first shot of the film feels like a sister to the sex-scene in Marc Fosters's Monsters Ball with Andrew Hanson (Hoffman) and his wife Gina (the gorgeous Marisa Tomei) on vacation having some nice animal sex. Its shocking at first, but after they finish they discuss things any normal couple talks about: happiness, fears, doubts, their future, and the fear of becoming distant. What Andy doesn't know is that Gina is also having an affair, with his brother Henry (Hawke).
Henry is a divorced man unable to pay his child support bills. So when his brother Andy proposes a jewelry store heist, it takes a small amount of convincing for him to go along with it, until he tells them that it will be their parents store they are robbing. Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris play their parents Charles and Nanette, who are just living out their final years together. They own the jewelry store with steady business and without any serious problems, until Nanette is killed in the failed heist by his brothers. Nothing was supposed to happen. No mess, no deaths, no problems. Right?
Wrong.
The two are now forced to cover their own skins, while also grieving for the death of their mother and now the emptiness of their father. Their downfall is filled with regret, mischief, betrayal, and utter tragedy. These two failed to think of the worst case scenario because they assumed that it was the perfect heist. Well in a way it was, on paper. The store would be robbed with Andy and Henry collecting the profit and the insurance covering their parents. Throughout this entire film I just thought about a quote my mother has been saying to me for literally my entire life: "Think Before You Act." That also could have been the film's tagline.
No comments:
Post a Comment