a grim fate for a pair of ordinary brothers

Dirty, sexy, money could easily be the title of Sidney Lumet's latest film, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead." The 83-year-old maestro of the everyman caught up in the crime and grit of the city unleashes a visceral and incendiary tale of two brothers who commit a heinous act of their pure desire to be everything they are not. The film is relentless in its pursuit of exposing two men dangerously coming apart in a world bluntly chalked up by a former crook/diamond cutter at the film's conclusion as "an evil place."

The opening scene will surely be regarded as one of the most memorable scenes from any film this year. Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his trophy wife Gina (an impressive and self-aware Marisa Tomei) furiously fornicate while looking at their mirrored reflections in their posh mirror paneled hotel suite in Brazil. It's a fantastic scene on two levels: Hoffman immediately establishes everything we need to know about his character (sad, angry, pathetic, overly ambitious, inwardly broken) and it sets the film's bracing tone. It's not romantic, sexy, or arousing. In a way it functions as a fantasy of Hoffman's Andy who while on their vacation can embody the person he wants to be--powerful, content, pleasing to his wife. However, that fantasy is immediately pulled from under him when he approaches his impressionable younger brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) about a jewelry store heist that could turn around their lives that are equal in their failures and messy domestic problems. The jewelry store in question is not just any jewelry store but their unassuming parents mom and pop operation in the suburbs. It's too easy to loathe these characters and their decision to take from their parents but in times when money is hard to come by and life is not as dreamy and complete as we would often wish it to be, it's amazing what some will do for the ephemeral happiness associated with the promise and possibility of money.

Because this is Lumet's film, the heist could not go without its complications and mistakes. I won't divulge too much because the joy and impact of the film is watching the brothers try to clean up their own mistakes, but everything definitely does not go as planned and the brothers scramble to ameliorate their petty crime disaster. This is when the performances become so powerful and seething with confusion, guilt, and pent-up childhood resentment, that they become so perfectly etched into your mind for quite some time. These are flawed men at best; crooks they are not. Their intentions are honest (Hank needs the money to catch up on his child support and Andy wants the quality of his life to continually improve for he and his wife), but their loose morals and self-hatred has lead them down a path of unfortunate odds and inescapable fate that is more fatalistic than they could have ever imagined. Hoffman is pitch perfect as a man full of rage and disappointment. He's not the perfect son, husband, brother, or co-worker. He nearly punches through the screen with his horrifying ability to be corrupt, nasty, and at a loss for true control over everyone and everything around him in order to succeed at something he knows he can't. His villainy is absorbing to watch as his life collapses before him that are purged in two brutal scenes, one during a car ride home from a funeral and the other a quite moment of self and environmental destruction after the departure of someone from his life. No less impressive is Hawke who is the physical manifestation of who we would all probably be in their circumstance--ladened with guilt, inadequate during the execution of the crime, and knotted with paranoia and fear of his imminent fate. Albert Finney as their obsessed and grief stricken father adds to a fine ensemble that could not be better suited for Lumet's melodramatic bubble of deception and ordinary men compelled to do wrong for the sake of good.

That sense of wanting to do good in an evil world has fascinated Lumet to the point of compulsion. The film is as rigorously made as the anti-heroes goal of amending their financial woes, and in a broader sense are emblematic of Lumet's career. Sonny (Al Pacino) robs a bank to help his lover in "Dog Day Afternoon", Frank Serpico blows the whistle on his own corrupt police force in "Serpico", and his prescient masterpiece, "Network", sacrifices one man as a necessary middle finger to the media and its consumption of our lives. Those films and "Before the Devil" are less concerned with exerting an obvious aesthetic than they are with propelling the audience into a world that is unusually familiar and perhaps begs us to look a little inward at ourselves. Lumet and debut screenwriter Kelly Masterson examine and re-examine every possible angle of the crime in "Before the Devil" through a narrative structure that explores each character's tense preparation, action, and reaction to their criminal fumble. The characters become more real and honest throughout the film as a result. That is the true horror of "Before the Devil". Andy and Hank are as average as we are and compelled by the same wants and needs. There may not be a better and more angry proposition on how limitless humans can be in their confused desire for a better life that is so effortlessly achieved and shockingly perverse.


Lumet, Hoffman, and Hawke talk about the film on Charlie Rose: