Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

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Sidney Lumet is one of the most accomplished contemporary American directors with an excessive cultural legacy made up of easily more than 50 movies to date, aaaand Ladies and Gentlemen it is: increasing. Featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke, Lumet's latest effort, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead tells the tale of two brothers, prepared to commit the most terrible crime of their lives. A crime that will change them permanently, and let me tell you something to surprise you to the very core right away: this change is NOT necessarily for the better. Not at all.

One finds oneself in quite an interesting position if to deal with this movie, as there are series of massive questions emerge right from the very beginning of this piece of art, provoking the viewer to start an immediate pondering process on the unfolding startoff-assumptions. No, I do NOT refer to the opening sequence where we are subjected to explicit graphic intercourse, in days like these, probably takes a bit more than that to knock an audience off of their seats, especially since I tend to hold to an opinion that Lumet's intention is far from being eager to shock us with the opening sketch, I simply believe he was curious of how actress Marisa Tomei looks if naked and facing a camera, though via opposite direction, if you get my hopefully delicate meaning here.

Though Lumet's evident urge to explicitly account on every single aspect of female anatomy's enigma grows somewhat old after the 15th minute of the film, yet by the period in question we do have the exquisite occasion to wonder if Ethan Hawke is a magnificent or a terrrrible actor, the most significant recognition as far as this question goes pretty much being its mere, sheer seriousness, as I could come up with the defendable answer yet.

Ethan Hawke very well might be a terrible actor whose disturbingly misplaced and clumsy skill set suits the portrayal of this superweary, damaged and desperate character masterfully, or he might as well be a truly great actor, being able to intentionally deprive himself of all the tiny personal traits that signifies the charismatic touch and appeal of a man whom you would keenly drink some shots of beer with, would even use the same elevator. (At the same time of course.)

The character of Henry Hanson is NOT such a man. Sure, the beer thing is OK, but as far as the elevator thing goes, I would definitely be very cautious and hesitant. The synopsis of the movie goes like this, though I will be careful not to spoil your experience and will reveal only the elements that unfold in the very early segment of the film:

Two brothers arrive at a point in their lives where and when both could use a major boost on their financial positions, one of them, Henry - portrayed by Hawke - being a bitter and sorrowfully weak man, the other one basically being your everyday stock-charmer, though armed with a personal charisma that proves to be captivating enough to build himself a life experience that delivers a quite decent form and style of existence. His name is Andew, a rendition by Philip Seymour Hoffman, a similarly, though not as much controversial performance as we have a chance to witness on Ethan Hawke's part. A subject we will later elaborate on via a hopefully refined attention.

Andrew's problem is called: woman, and from that point on we can be sure it is bad, bad news. He simply needs more money to satisfy the ideals of the future the woman and he were contemplated and dreamed about. This particular performance gets more and more believable and convincing by the minute, with definite peak moments where the character faces serious crysis and dilemma. As long as there is not much else to do than socially shine/impress/exhibit personal traits of this stock-charmer figure though, the character tends to shallow down to a 0.5 dimensional balloon figurine without any capacity whatsoever beyond being captivating, and being 110% sure of how captivating he is.

The effective field of operation of the installment unfolds smoothly: Andrew convinces Harry to rob the jewelry shop of their parents, having supersafe insurances, the old folks will not be negatively influenced, in fact, they would financially benefit from the hit. Andrew figures: everyone will be happy, though he accounts the details of his plan only by the time that Harry decided to be committed to it. From that particular moment on - there is no return.



Things go extrasour tough. Henry having no confidence of himself being able to pull off the robbery alone, he secretly joins up with an experienced evildoer and the hit itself turns into an encounter concerning gunshots, both the evildoer and, unfortunately, the mother of the two brothers die in the incident. A desperate series of events start to take place to cover up every possible trails of involvement on the part of the brothers, and Lumet utilizes a quite cunning timeline-mixture approach to present the events both leading to the robbery and for accounting on the consecutive events as well.

This narrative method is similar to the one utilized by Quentin Tarantino in his trademark delivery Pulp Fiction, only Lumet relies even more heavily yet without a doubt masterfully on this storytelling method, presenting whole series of intersecting setups, so at one time we have a chance to witness a particular focal sequence with a similarly curios background sequence occurring, then Lumet turns this buildup around later on, focusing on the prior background element, making a supportive background fabric of the sequence that was already presented as a focal point. This nice and interesting game serves the movie well, in fact, I find it to be the most integral and pretty much the very best aspect of this piece of art.

As far as the characters go, the role of Albert Finney, portraying the father is also of essential importance, as the conclusion of the film is built almost entirely on the moral functionality and the reactions to various key events of the character in question. Finney delivers a flawless performance, not something you could tell of the two protagonists, though in my opinion Philip Seymour Hoffman has a wide array of possibilities and character types open to be explored and utilized by him. Of Ethan Hawke, I am sorry to say I remain skeptic today, but would be grateful to disappoint keenly in the future.

Time has clearly arrived to justify the seemingly low Onion rating I verdict for the movie, and so I attempt to justify this act of mine, indeed. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead invites us to admire how believable, layered and complex characters it presents, yet the protagonists seem to boil down to quite hastily constructed, everyday social moral conflicts, only difference is that Sidney Lumet beheld all the relative shallowness of the drama and chose to utilize a gigantic magnifying glass to make conflicts seem bigger and thus, his film more full of content. Acting seems quite controversial to me, as well. Though at first it seems impossible to decide whether Lumet relied on these two actors because they project these semi-false / semi-convincing personalities with a similarly semi-convincing appeal, or did the director simply hope that the actors are strong enough to tell this story regardless of their current handicaps in the craftsmanship of acting?



"You DON'T think I'm overacting here, DO ya?"

"See - I think you're WAAAY beyond that!"

A sense of stable, mostly everpresent controversy I feel during the movie, primarily originating from quite tiny, but extremely disturbing vibrations, ruthlessly exhibited on the acting side.
Some very little, yet, for me, quite significant moments and nuances that led me to excessive confusion: Hawke's character witnessing his daughter's performance at a school event. Children performing drama sequences for their parents, you know the drill. The most basic and most serious trauma that is likely to occur during such events is of course is to forget the lines to cite, and the danger of this seems to affect Henry's daughter for a moment, but fortunately she remembers at once, and continues on.

HAH! BEHOLD the face of Ethan Hawke with thy eager eyes! Behold! See? Is this for real?? No. No. No and no. This is false. Ethan Hawke TRIES to be fulfilled of honest bliss and eternal love, he is almost at the very last verge of sighing up helplessly of the unspeakable inner joys keenly and deeply experienced - only he just imagined. Imagined all that.

The feeling is NOT THERE.

But the pondering of it is present. At best. Well. This is unacceptable, even from an artistic or from a scientific (hah!) point of view. As a filmmaker with such a tremendous series of works already in his legacy, Lumet must have seen that the feeling is not there, yet the feeling definitely should have been there if he is to offer a "honest" movie in the oldschool sense of the word. The "real father", I suppose, would certainly possess the feeling that Hawke offers such a clumsy, quite frankly, laughable and desperate rendition of. Truly, a rendition I am ready to scratch my face off at when forced to witness again. Now, is it possible that Lumet personally and confidentially asked Hawke to fail tremendously at rendering the emotion? Probably not. They are lying to us, and this is but one occasion, a reoccurring sequence that tends to hurt my cognitive receptors as much as the aforementioned emotional counterfeiting, is: the robbery sketch.

I never ever seen such a vacant segment of a city before, not in real life and not in a movie, though never ever would have occur to me that the region was closed down for shooting a film. Yet another grouchy, unpleasant question to ask which does not release you once it made itself quite obvious and legit. Was Lumet unaware indeed that these sequences are shouting loudly how evidently staged they are? Just two cars in the background solves these problems superbly, yet the absence degrades the output tremendously. The movie seems to me as a secret host for a little, hidden symphony of such silly gimmicks, buggering the output even more with their subtle, yet unpleasant delicacy and relatively hard noticeability.

On the other hand, Lumet shows very beautiful and bizarrely peaceful pictures and moments as well. The weird, false calmness and the escapist comfort ensured by a secret drug den where Andrew finds bits of temporal, though tainted harmony and moments of total silence for hard cash are definite peak moments of the film, ironically, these are the moments as well without any significant character involvement.

Lumet stumbles upon this situation in a casual, easy manner, and accounts precisely upon the quite radical environmental situation, making the viewer notice how bizarrely fascinating qualities this place and mood possesses, welcomely drawing the attention of the audience to how painfully real and how sorrowfully beautiful an experience this secret place offers for Andrew. Yet again, from an escapist point of view, of course.

All in all, a deeply controversial film we witness in my opinion, with a strange and somewhat unnecessary, semi-clumsy urge to shock the viewer during the movie's conclusion period. The final moment is interesting though, and also is of special note. I personally think that the film would have been "better" or rather: more important with mercy not just spoken of, but presented. Those who have seen the film already do know what I am accounting on here. Doubts often seem to arise out of the mere fabric of this installment, doubts eager to degrade the ultimate quality of the film, yet it certainly made welcomely evident to me how I never ever doubted Robert DeNiro or Clint Eastwood or Nick Nolte just to name a few.

As a movie that presents you numerous moments to find yourself pondering if its occasional clumsiness is forged out of intention or of classic sloppiness, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead remains a piece of art that is quite easy and safe to recommend, yet I am afraid it is quite easy and safe to utterly forget about, as well.

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