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| Before the Devil Knows You're Dead * * * * * |
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| Written by Sam Jansen |
| Friday, 08 February 2008 00:00 |
 Director: Sidney LumetIt’s a rarity for a film about a heist to captivate one’s attention from start to finish. If you don’t find that you’ve entered something akin to a vegetative state by the time the first person gets shot, then it’s been a pretty good outing. It’s therefore a credit to this particular bite-of-the-cherry that it manages not only to do just this, but in a way that is both original and exciting. As all masterpieces do, it begins with sex. Then a jewellery store heist that goes horrifically wrong. A few moments later comes the first of the film’s many chronological leaps, to three days before, and we begin to find out what exactly is going on. It seems that Andrew Hanson (Hoffman) just persuaded his brother Henry (Hawke) to rob a jewellery store…one that belongs to their parents. How pleasant. As we now know, it goes wrong and Mummy is mortally wounded. The head of the Hanson household (Finney) vows to hunt down the perpetrators and do bad things to them. Cue some serious consternation on the part of the grim brothers. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is not, however, a simple detective story. It’s a multi-faceted family saga that follows the lives of the two brothers and the father at various points before, during and after the robbery, setting out their motivations, their weaknesses and their inevitable paths to destruction. Along the way we find out everything we need to know about the central characters, and by the time the credits start to roll, there’s no sympathy to be had for any of them. Not only does crime not pay, it eats away at the soul of everybody involved in it. The vast majority of the acting in this film is outstanding – even Ethan Hawke is good. Hoffman, who’s had fingers in more pies than Aunt Bessie recently, is immense, and the scenes with him and Hawke together are stunning. Their tense, awkward relationship translates to the viewer so well it feels as if you’re sitting at the Affleck family dinner table at Thanksgiving. The only let-down in terms of performance comes from Marisa Tomei, playing Hoffman’s wife, whose pathetic cry of anguish when she eventually breaks up with her husband sounds like the moan of a disease-ridden farmyard animal that needs to be taken round back and shot. Repeatedly. Then bludgeoned for a bit. Then left to fester for a few days. Then sold to Tesco. VERDICT You’d have to be a self-loathing masochist or Gary Barlow to not love this film. Well worth the time and money of anyone. |
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