This film is an interesting one – a small ensemble drama that ratchets tension up bit by bit. It could have been a stage place except for the vital necessity of a camera. Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman are brothers embroiled separately in various unseemly habits when they decide to commit a crime against their own family. As with any properly interesting story, things don’t go according to plan, and all hell breaks loose. It’s a true karmageddon.
Hoffman has been in three big-deal movies here at the end of 2007; I can’t really say which is his best performance or on which he himself seemed to have the most fun, but I think this one may be my favorite. He anchors this movie and demands to be the focus of it immediately from his surprising opening scene with Marisa Tomei. Hawke erased all my bad memories from his execrable Hamlet and sucked me into his squalid, sincere, and desperate character. Tomei appears (a lot of her appears, if you get my meaning) seemingly only as a plot element, less as a character – her behavior seems only applied as needed. She purrs or snarls, making sleepy acquiescent noises, tossing her mane around until she finally has a moment to do something.
The parents are played by Albert Finney and Nanette Hanson with a welcome onrush of normalcy. If it also drives you crazy, you have seen Hanson before as Spider-Man’s Aunt May. You’re welcome. Only Finney responds to the major inciting incident in any identifiable way (though he then goes on to premeditatedly ruin any future family Christmas gatherings). He’s admirably restrained and cuts a tragic figure, all the way up to a flamboyantly crazy conclusion.
What makes Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead unique and cool is its narrative structure. The story moves smoothly back and forth in time and shifting perspective among the characters, and never confusingly. Scenes are replayed in whole or in part, shot simultaneously from different angles, always adding information central to a specific character. Director of Photography Ron Fortunato shot the movie on HD video, cramming camera men into invisible corners to increase the intimacy and efficiency of this storytelling method. Even though the story plays out nonlinearly, the intensity surges up a straight slope. This would seem impossible if not for the masterful screenplay by first-timer Kelly Masterson.
Credit for the whole of course goes to esteemed director Sidney Lumet, and I am sad for the lack of recognition for this film in such a wan year as 2007 – you know, where movies like Beowulf and Margot at the Wedding are getting any attention. Refreshing myself on Lumet’s filmography, I see a long history of adapting stage works into film, and those I have seen (and those famous for being so) being utterly awesome examples of doing so (Deathtrap, The Wiz are the criminally few I know: this will be addressed I assure you!).
I loved Hawke’s complete breakdown and inability to cope with the disaster he has created, and I loved Hoffman’s smooth businessman stepping in confidently to make everything worse. Hoffman also gets a tasty big Oscar moment after so many scenes where his numb character could have blown a gasket but did not. This is a harsh family crime drama, and brilliantly done. Go to your local art-house now, and join me in catching up with Lumet’s other works.
MPAA Rating R-graphic sexuality, drug use, violence, language, nudity
Release date 10/26/07
Time in minutes 117
Director Sidney Lumet
Studio ThinkFilm