Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Buy This Item Before the Devil Knows You're Dead by ThinkFilm  Available from Amazon  $17.99  on 9-21-2008     Master filmmaker Sidney Lumet directs this absorbing suspense thriller about a family facing the worst enemy of all itself. Oscar®-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Andy, an overextended broker who lures his younger brother, Hank (Ethan Hawke) into a larcenous scheme: the pair will rob a suburban mom-and-pop jewelry store that appears to be the quintessential easy target. The problem is, the store owners are Andy and Hank s actual mom and pop and, when the seemingly perfect crime goes awry, the damage lands right at their doorstep. Oscar-winner Marisa Tomei plays Andy s trophy wife, who is having a clandestine affair with Hank. The stellar cast also includes Albert Finney as the family patriarch who pursues justice at all costs, completely unaware that the culprits he is hunting are his own sons. A classy, classic heist-gone-wrong drama in the tradition of The Killing and Lumet s own The Anderson Tapes, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOW YOU RE DEAD is smart enough to know that we often have the most to fear from those who are near and dear. Reader Reviews First of all, this movie might not be for everyone. The subject matter is heinous. This one won't be showing up on the Hallmark channel anytime soon. It's an adult movie. The story is complex and disturbing and it never wavers from the facts. Too often we see main characters do heinous things only to have the movie cop out and somehow make the character likeable. That's not the case in this film. In this one, Andy Hanson (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is a loser. He has a decent job (six figures) but life just doesn't bring him happiness. He is rather despicable and self-centered. At first glance his character seems similar to the one he played in Owning Mahowny. Like Mahowny, he has access to and embezzles money from his company. He is about to be exposed, so he comes up with a plan to get fast money and enlists his brother, Henry (Ethan Hawke), who is also a loser but for other reasons, in a scheme to rob a jewelry store. Ethan does a nice job as the underachieving, baby of the family. He should have never been trusted with such a task, which shows just how poorly thought out the scheme is. One bad decision leads to another as the whole thing blows up in the brothers' faces and we get to see them slide deeper and deeper into hopelessness. I don't want to give away too much of the plot for watching the story unravel is part of the reason this movie is so good. We see events happen, but then flash back to see how they came to be. This type of storytelling is extremely well done here. Marisa Tomei plays a nice role as Andy's wife. She also has her problems and her character complicates matters slightly. The story line involving her is kind of in the background. I'm not sure if this was by original design or not, but it seems that it should have caused more problems than it did. Albert Finney does a fine job as Charles Hanson, the grieving father of Andy and Henry. His grief eventually gets the best of him and it's almost understandable. But he is a little too cool when he does what he does at the end. The movie goes by at a nice pace. Not too fast, and not too slow. The story will pull you in and you will want to see what happens next. Nothing really fancy here, just good storytelling. The writer, director, and actors all seemed to be on the same page and it really paid off. It's one of those little movies that no one knows about and once you've seen it you will be telling others to follow suit.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead Available from Amazon Price: $17.99 Updated on 9-21-2008.

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