Virginia Film Festival: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)

Sidney Lumet is obviously known primarily for his New York crime films (Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Prince of the City, etc.) but something that runs through nearly all of his work, including other masterpieces such as The Verdict, or 12 Angry Men, is a generosity of spirit that is rare in any filmmaker, particularly American, particularly now. Lumet’s films take their time, his style is unfussy. Lumet lingers on the small moments between the bursts of profanity or violence, subtly insisting on the humanity of his characters, regardless of their actions. Look at the very long phone conversation between Al Pacino and his lover Chris Sarandon in Dog Day Afternoon, very few filmmakers would have let that scene go on so long, and they would’ve been cutting one of the best scenes of the movie in the process.

Sidney Lumet’s last picture, Find Me Guilty, signaled a minor return to critical favor. Again, the film is refreshingly deliberate, humane, funny, disciplined, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Vin Diesel was miscast as the lead. I have no beef with Diesel, I recognize that he’s talented, but he’s too young for the part, and I never could quite suspend my disbelief. Alex Rocco is terrific in the movie though, and there’s several really good, typical to Lumet scenes, particularly an almost love scene between Diesel and Annabella Sciorra in his jail cell.

There’s nothing minor about Lumet’s new film, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. This is that rare film that comes along hopefully at least once a year (last year it was Pan’s Labyrinth) where your over-tuned critic/snob faculties shut down almost immediately. Lumet grabs you by your collar, or, if you’re me, your sweater and says “we’re going for a ride, leave the all the other bullshit behind.” Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is the work of a major craftsman who’s at the height of his mojo; assured, confident, masterful, very nearly flawless, a perfect genre film that morphs into a spot on examination of the death of an American family.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is notably meaner and nastier than the typical Lumet picture. It recalls the snakes of another Lumet classic,Network, only devoid of the conscience that William Holden at least partially represented in that film. Tellingly, the two most sympathetic characters in this new film are both women, and one is killed early on, and the other is marginalized as a sexual object and casually discarded. The characters of Devil are all dublicitous, or weak, or both, and this brings about a suspense that recalls Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, if everyone is bad then anyone can win. There’s no good guy here to ensure for us that the film will turn out a certain way. This is the Godless world of a very classic noir-crime film.

How interesting then that very little of the movie actually details the planning or execution of the robbery that powers the film. The plan is introduced early on, and the specifics are glossed over. This is primarily because the architect of the plan, Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is as uninterested in the specifics as we are. That’s Hank’s (Ethan Hawke) job, and Andy is so blunt and merciless with Hank that we feel that a sort of blackmail is taking place. Andy and Hank are brothers, and Andy, like many older brothers, is elusive and bossy, reveling in a command that’s more illusory than actual.

Many crime films, especially of the David Mamet variety, revel in the notion that no character is what they seem to be, and that every character acts different with every other character. That is also true of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, but it’s not in the service of the crime portion of the story. The characters, particularly Andy, alter their behavior with each other as people do in real life, they put on guises that the social situation at hand demands. Watch Andy with Hank. Then consider the surprisingly tender post-coital scene between Andy and his wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei) that occurs near the beginning of the film.

Then consider the sex between them that jarringly opens the film. Then watch how Andy is around his father, Charles (Albert Finney), and how effortlessly he slides from self-loathing and insecurity to viciousness. Then pay attention to the scene between Andy and Gina that immediately follows in the car on the way home. It’s possibly the greatest scene in the movie, and the kind of scene, like the phone conversation in Dog Day Afternoon, that a lesser director may have cut for the sake of momentum. All of this is, again, a testament to the Lumet humanity that pervades even the more relentless of his pictures.

One could go on and on in this fashion. Marisa Tomei’s Gina, while largely played as a more vulnerable sex kitten, seems to actually be a statement on how men look at women that are as disarmingly attractive as she is. Tomei is not in the film much, but she’s in two of the most memorable scenes, the one already mentioned above, and another one, where it’s established just how far her concern for Andy reaches. Lumet plays our obsession with surface against us here, no way a woman who looks like Tomei could actually be interested in a man who looks like Hoffman for legitimate reasons right? Right? Maybe not, but maybe.

I went on a little bit about Philip Seymour Hoffman in my last post about his other starring role this year, The Savages. I had guilty knowledge when I proclaimed him the most exciting American actor in movies. I had seen The Savages, but I had also seen this film already, and Hoffman’s work in these two films is one of the most amazing one-two punches I’ve ever seen from an actor. Most are lucky to create characters like Andy and Jon in their entire career, much less the same year. Hank is a more malignant creation, but he’s a villain, like some of the Cagney characters, that you are tempted to cry for.

I rarely buy Ethan Hawke in anything, but he pulls off the most thankless part here in his best performance. Hawke’s Hank is the twitchy, cowardly, nervous character that most of these types of movies require to keep their engines turning, and Hawke plays a wonderful variation of it. I usually think of Ethan Hawke as too self-consciously “actorly”, but here he bravely plays a complete mess of a moron, a person who gets shit on by every other member of the cast.

Albert Finney’s portrayal of Charles is equally unforgiving: strong, minimal, and terrifying. Finney is really beginning to show his age, and Lumet concentrates on the crinkles and crags in his face. This is a portrait of the benevolent old man as a thin mask of need, of vulnerability, and, when provoked, of boundless vengeance.

When a director as famous as Sidney Lumet makes a film this good, it’s tempting to give him most of the credit behind the screen, but it should also be said that newcomer Kelly Masterson has made a striking debut with the film’s screenplay. I look forward to future work from him.*

A month or so ago, I said I was tempted to call The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a masterpiece, but would wait and let the years decide. I’ll take the bait this time, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a masterpiece.

★★★★

*Yes, this passage has been changed around a bit. K. Masterson understands men so well because he is, in fact, a guy. I couldn’t find much on him at the time, and I made an assumption based on the name, my apologies.

Posted on November 8th, 2007 in 2007, Reviews, Crime, Drama |

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