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Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Sidney Lumet.
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei
Description: Middle-aged accountant Andy is struggling to keep his marriage to his wife Gina afloat and feels certain that a permanent move to South America would ease their woes. Unfortunately, money is tight and Andy's creative solutions to office cash flow are about to be exposed by the auditors. To solve a sticky situation, Andy plots to rob the jewellery store owned by his parents with help from his younger brother Hank, who is being bled dry for child support.
Country: US. 2007. 116mins
Big brother: Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman, right) and Hank (Ethan Hawke)
Feckless: Ethan Hawke in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Sidney Lumet may be 83 but his new film - the best he has made for some time - looks like the work of a much younger man. It's a thriller about a robbery that turns into a colossal mess. We've seen many such before, but in this case the robbery involves an entire family and the result is even more traumatic for those involved.
Businessman Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has a drug habit and wants out of his boring job and into a Brazilian adventure. So he persuades Hank, his feckless and cash-strapped "baby" brother (Ethan Hawke), to rob a jewellery store owned by their parents (Rosemary Harris and Albert Finney). No one will be harmed, the store is fully insured and the brothers will share the loot between them.
But Hank can't do anything right. He takes a criminal friend along with him to do the dirty work and the result is two dead from gunshot wounds. One of them is the friend and the other Hank's mother.
The police are nonplussed, but the brothers are now in a state of high guilt that's going to ruin lives already spinning out of control.
Lumet tells his story in nonchronological fashion and from multiple viewpoints. He is fortunate to have a cast who ratchet up the tension as expertly as he does.
Hoffman, as usual, is extraordinarily convincing as the instigator of the heist who seems to know it all but is still totally unaware that his wife (Marisa Tomei, as undressed as we have ever seen her) is having an affair with his younger brother. Hawke, meanwhile, successfully makes panic his middle name.
But all the actors in this sweaty tale of broken dreams and misjudged plans have their moments - even Finney in an underwritten part that simply requires him to look desperate and furious.
Perhaps the movie is too long at two hours, but that is an old Lumet trait and he's got the rest substantially right.
You feel the tragedy of this collapsing family, even if you know that the two brothers deserve everything that fate eventually throws at them.
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