Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1746 in DVD
- Brand: Image Entertainment
- Released on: 2008-04-15
- Rating: R (Restricted)
- Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
- Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
- Original language: English
- Number of discs: 1
- Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
- Running time: 112 minutes
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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
Review
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. Eighy-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 --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
beforethe devil knows your dead
it is a lot twisted thought but great acting so I would say check it out
Engrossing movie...
The acting was superb. Ethan Hawke, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who never dissapoints, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney. All big names, and great performances. The movie was engrossing and ultimately kind of tragic. Loved it.
Not every story has a happy ending
I thought this was the best movie I had seen in years. The acting was very good and yes its a depressing story, but that should not mean its a bad movie (not sure why those people who rated this movie as poor did so just because it was disturbing and depressing). If you need a happy ending and hate flashbacks and forward in movies so much that you can't enjoy such films, well then, this movie isn't for you.
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