Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
starring: Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Rosemary Harris, Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman
directed by: Sidney Lumet
directed by: Sidney Lumet
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Product Description:
ANDY IS AN OVEREXTENDED PAYROLL EXECUTIVE WHO LURES HIS YOUNGER BROTHER, HANK, INTO A LARCENOUS SCHEME: THE PAIR WILL ROB A SUBURBAN MOM-&-POP JEWELRY STORE. THE PROBLEM IS, THE STORE OWNERS ARE ANDY & HANK'S ACTUAL MOM & POP, AND WHEN THE SEEMINGLY PERFECT CRIME GOEW HORRIBLY WRONG.
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
ANDY IS AN OVEREXTENDED PAYROLL EXECUTIVE WHO LURES HIS YOUNGER BROTHER, HANK, INTO A LARCENOUS SCHEME: THE PAIR WILL ROB A SUBURBAN MOM-&-POP JEWELRY STORE. THE PROBLEM IS, THE STORE OWNERS ARE ANDY & HANK'S ACTUAL MOM & POP, AND WHEN THE SEEMINGLY PERFECT CRIME GOEW HORRIBLY WRONG.
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
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- Watch this Instead of Cassandra's Dream
What happens when two veteran directors make two similarly themed movies, each focusing on two brothers planning the perfect crime? Predictably, in each case, it all goes horribly wrong. However, only in Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows Your Dead," is that a good thing. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke (along with Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei) make Lumet's botched robbery caper consistently intriguing and suspenseful. In the case of Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream," the brothers-in ... Read More
Rating: 
- A greek tragedy
This movie is one of the darkest tales I have ever seen - now you are warned. Its story unfolds much like one of the Shakespearean (or Greek) tragedies and it does not offer much conselation in its darkness.
Only exception is the acting with is superb and carries the movie as does the (exagerated) issues it highlights in the relations between parents and child and importantly parents and multiple children in as much as how the 2-3 children are often treated very differently more or less ... Read More
Rating: 
- Melodrama.Hmm . . .
A co-worker recommmended this movie to me, telling me that it was a drama that nearly bordered on horror.As a huge fan of horror, I was curious.Adversely, I'm not a drama fan.In my collection of movies, I own only 3 dramas, including this one.
After viewing Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, I was ready to tear into it.It is far too ridiculous to be considered drama, or even thriller.I was thinking it was much closer to melodrama.
But lo and behold, after reading the first handful ... Read More
Rating: - My #1 movie of the year!
First off, any movie that has Marisa Tomei naked in three different scenes automatically gets four stars. However, this movie is even better than that! It's incredible that the guy who made movies like '12 Angry Men', 'Serpico', 'Dog Day Afternoon', 'Network' and 'The Verdict', can actually come out with one of his best at age 83. This is a great crime drama about a heist where everything goes wrong. But it's not really a heist movie, that's just the outline for the in-depth character studies. Philip Seymour ... Read More
Rating: - Well that was a cheery one
What a dark and depressing film Sidney Lumet has created. Technically everything works from the script, the acting, the directing, and so forth butI still wasn't impressed. What annoyed me the most was the 'Reservoir Dogs' style of jumping back and forth from the robbery, the preparations before the robbery, the aftermath of the robbery. The film is already long at two hours and this abrupt back and forth made it feel longer. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play the Hanson brothers: Andy and Hank. Andy ... Read More
- Watch this Instead of Cassandra's DreamWhat happens when two veteran directors make two similarly themed movies, each focusing on two brothers planning the perfect crime? Predictably, in each case, it all goes horribly wrong. However, only in Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows Your Dead," is that a good thing. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke (along with Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei) make Lumet's botched robbery caper consistently intriguing and suspenseful. In the case of Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream," the brothers-in ... Read More
- A greek tragedyThis movie is one of the darkest tales I have ever seen - now you are warned. Its story unfolds much like one of the Shakespearean (or Greek) tragedies and it does not offer much conselation in its darkness.
Only exception is the acting with is superb and carries the movie as does the (exagerated) issues it highlights in the relations between parents and child and importantly parents and multiple children in as much as how the 2-3 children are often treated very differently more or less ... Read More
- Melodrama.Hmm . . .A co-worker recommmended this movie to me, telling me that it was a drama that nearly bordered on horror.As a huge fan of horror, I was curious.Adversely, I'm not a drama fan.In my collection of movies, I own only 3 dramas, including this one.
After viewing Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, I was ready to tear into it.It is far too ridiculous to be considered drama, or even thriller.I was thinking it was much closer to melodrama.
But lo and behold, after reading the first handful ... Read More
- My #1 movie of the year!First off, any movie that has Marisa Tomei naked in three different scenes automatically gets four stars. However, this movie is even better than that! It's incredible that the guy who made movies like '12 Angry Men', 'Serpico', 'Dog Day Afternoon', 'Network' and 'The Verdict', can actually come out with one of his best at age 83. This is a great crime drama about a heist where everything goes wrong. But it's not really a heist movie, that's just the outline for the in-depth character studies. Philip Seymour ... Read More
- Well that was a cheery oneWhat a dark and depressing film Sidney Lumet has created. Technically everything works from the script, the acting, the directing, and so forth butI still wasn't impressed. What annoyed me the most was the 'Reservoir Dogs' style of jumping back and forth from the robbery, the preparations before the robbery, the aftermath of the robbery. The film is already long at two hours and this abrupt back and forth made it feel longer. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play the Hanson brothers: Andy and Hank. Andy ... Read More
