2007   USA Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead Image Cover
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Director:Sidney Lumet
Studio:Image Entertainment/ThinkFilm
Writer:Kelly Masterson
IMDb Rating:7.4 (44,841 votes)
Awards:5 wins & 10 nominations
Genre:Crime, Drama, Thriller
Duration:112 min
Languages:English
IMDb:0292963
Amazon:B00112S8RS
Search:NetflixYouTube
Sidney Lumet  ...  (Director)
Kelly Masterson  ...  (Writer)
 
Philip Seymour Hoffman  ...  Andrew 'Andy' Hanson
Ethan Hawke  ...  Henry 'Hank' Hanson
Albert Finney  ...  Charles Hanson
Marisa Tomei  ...  Gina Hanson
Rosemary Harris  ...  Nanette Hanson
Aleksa Palladino  ...  Chris Lasorda
Michael Shannon  ...  Dex
Amy Ryan  ...  Martha Hanson
Brian F. O'Byrne  ...  Bobby Lasorda
Blaine Horton  ...  Justin
Arija Bareikis  ...  Katherine
Leonardo Cimino  ...  William
Lee Wilkof  ...  Jake
Damon Gupton  ...  Doctor
Adrian Martinez  ...  Security Guard
Sarah Livingston  ...  Danielle Hanson
Ron Fortunato  ...  Cinematographer
Brían F. O'Byrne  ...  Bobby Lasorda
Summary: Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is an exceptionally dark story about a crime gone wrong and the complicated reasons behind it. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are outstanding as brothers whose mutual love-hate relationship subtly colors their agreement to rob their own parents' jewelry store, and more explicitly affects the anxious aftermath of their villainy when their mother (Rosemary Harris) ends up shot. Hoffman's steely, emotionally locked-up Andy, despite pulling down six figures as a corporate executive, is supporting an expensive drug habit while trying to leave the country with his depressed wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). Hank (Hawke), a whipped dog of low intelligence, owes back alimony and child support to his ex-spouse. Both men need money and agree to rip off their parents' business, a decision that goes awry and puts both men in various kinds of jeopardy while their mother remains comatose and their father (Albert Finney) lurches along trying to make sense of anything. Writer Kelly Masterson's screenplay employs a perhaps now-overly-familiar time-shifting tactic, jumping around the chronology of the story's events and replaying scenes from different vantage points. The effect is a little tedious but successfully deconstructs the film's drama in a way that shows how such terrible events are directly linked to family dysfunction, old wounds between parent and child, between siblings, that fester into full-blown tragedy. Eighty-three-year-old director Lumet (Serpico) employs bleached colors and scenes of blunt sexuality and violence, adding to the moral rudderlessness and banality of this airless world. If Devil feels a little reductive and insistently grim, it is also a generally persuasive work by an old master. --Tom Keogh


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