Directed by Sidney Lumet. Written by Kelly Masterson
What kind of man would hatch a plan to rob his parents? What kind of man would join his brother to do it? What kind of man would openly favor one son over the other? You’ll meet all three in Sidney Lumet’s Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, where a simple enough jewelry store robbery turns into one messy family tragedy.
This should be familiar to all with siblings: the youngest, the baby, can do no wrong, the oldest has the battle scars from parents’ lessons learned, and the relationship between the two siblings can be a bit of a coin toss, both in terms of how they relate in general, and how they relate at a given moment. Resentment can run deep, but moments of grace spring eternal too.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays Andy, a real estate accountant who’s worked hard to get where he is, which is out from underneath his parents. He’s not unscathed, dealing with substance abuse and a restless spirit. He wants to hold onto what he has though, trying to rekindle his relationship with his wife Gina, played by Marisa Tomei, whose thoughts seem elsewhere.
Andy’s brother is Hank, a divorced dad scant on cash and sense. With a shaggy haircut and no gumption, Ethan Hawke’s puppy eyes sees him coast by in everyone’s eyes except his exasperated ex-wife’s. Both Andy and Hank need cash. For Andy, it’s an attempt to start his life over, and for Hank, it’s just to stay above water.
Andy makes a proposition to Hank: let’s knock over our parents’ jewelry store on a sleepy Saturday morning when it’s only the dotty old assistant guarding $500,000 worth of precious stones, all of it insured. Victimless crime and all that. Cue disaster: people who weren’t supposed to be there are, the store isn’t quite a pushover, and the bloody consequences ripple out. Suddenly this clean little caper is distinctly not so.
The pulpy presentation at the start of Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead quickly gives way to something much more character-driven and satisfying, as Lumet shatters his narrative and then builds it back up in nonlinear fashion, jumping perspectives and dropping some bombshells along the way. Characters are not who we thought they were, the situation is not as it first appeared. More than a gimmick, the nonlinearity has a pattern to it, shading in the negative spaces to satisfying effect, like a house of cards coming together.
Kelly Masterson’s script is full of complex, imperfect characters who all operate in a grey space. Figuring them out, or trying to, is what makes Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead riveting and despite the tragedy that befalls all, it’s not without its comedy. Much of that is courtesy of Hawke, who doesn’t mind coming off as a blubbering good-for-nothing who must be saved by his older brother.
It’s Hoffman who truly shines as the high-strung older sibling, and it bears repeating that Hoffman left us way too soon. There’s warmth, there’s ferociousness, there’s the bluest of blues. You never know what Hoffman’s going to do, but it’s always going to be the unexpected and perfectly right.
Not perfectly right is the cinematography by Ron Fortunato, who offers up the visual pop of toilet paper. Just a drab, bleached array of not-colors for a movie that runs very hot throughout. You can’t quite pin it on Fortunato as Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is representative of its time, and I hope we take stock of the visual product we put out during this period and learn our lesson.
Unfortunately, it’s not just the cinematography that’s fallen out of favor, as Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead makes you miss intricate stories with thorny characters going through the extreme of what regular life has to offer. The scheming, the havoc, the decisions borne from deep-rooted but relatable emotions, Lumet’s movie has it all, and there’s less and less of that going around.
The criminal leanings of this family is hopefully not relatable to most, but much of it will be: the anguish of a son who felt on the outside of his own family; the bereft fury of a father; the desperation of a man who knows his fate is not in his own hands. All this bubbles up from underneath the veneer of a failed crime caper in Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, offering something much longer-lasting than the thrill of its central event.
Mikkel Frederiksen 