Walrus Comix DVD Review
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Maybe 83 is the new 30. How else can you account for Sidney Lumet’s latest film, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead? Standout films become increasingly hard to produce when your resume is marked with the likes of 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network, but Lumet has birthed another film worthy of inclusion in that rarified air in which he has often operated. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a riveting and emotionally charged look at a family whose fractious past portends an increasingly tragic future. Lumet has long had a reputation for maximizing his actors’ potential in a given role, and Devil allows Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, and Albert Finney in particular to demonstrate their director’s ability to cull fully formed and mesmerizing performances once again. Aided by a sharp script by first-time screenwriter Kelly Masterson, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead examines the peculiar brand of misanthropic fruit that family trees bring to bear and ultimately emerges as a more than worthy addition to Lumet’s canon.

Lumet has always had a keen eye for expressing the plights of otherwise unremarkable characters who have been thrust into extenuating circumstances. His movies have been so successful because they allow the viewer the opportunity to identify with people whose actions often rely less on moral ambiguity than primal, reactionary impulses. Regardless of the initial motivations, Lumet’s central figures most often find that their reach does in fact exceed their collective grasp, and it is the realization of this conundrum that makes his work so ultimately relatable. With Devil, the director once again is able to enter into such a character study, which he then mixes with a little elemental Greek tragedy in telling the story of the Hanson family. There are traces of the XX chromosome in the Hanson family tree, but this chapter of their lives is dominated by the men, led by patriarch Charles (Finney), eldest brother Andy (Seymour Hoffman), and the certified baby of the litter, Hank (Hawke). From the onset of the film, it’s clear that behind the run of the mill upper middle class façade lays an unhealthy serving of emotional turbulence, with Andy proving to be the vortex through which much of the dysfunction is initiated and distributed. Andy, whose existence seems centered on the idea of living beyond his means due to a trophy wife (Marisa Tomei) and a variety of extracurricular activities, enlists his younger brother in a seemingly “victimless” crime that will net the brothers Hanson some much needed spending cash. Hank is a natural born fuck-up with an ex-wife (Amy Ryan) whose sole purpose in life apparently is to remind him of his inability to keep up with his child support payments. For all of his flaws (including coveting other people’s wives), Hank appears to be genuinely harmless and in possession of generally good intentions, but it is clear through his interaction with his older brother that he doesn’t possess the ability to say no to Andy. Hank has enough of a hard time staying out of his own way, but once his brother sets his less than altruistic sights on him, you know the shit and the fan are about to meet in short order.

What transpires as a result of Andy’s plan and Hank’s woefully inept execution of said plan plunges the entire family into emotional bedlam, as new layers of chaos are revealed as the unspooling of the subterfuge begins in earnest. Finney shines as the father for whom the collateral damage of the film’s central event pushes him to a place where grief, obsession, and vengeance commingle. He wears his devastation behind a haggard wince that occasionally gives way to the steely glare of a man not entirely blindsided by the discord in his own house but painfully unaware of its eventual scope. Hawke and Seymour Hoffman both give searing performances, lending each depiction the necessary depth that Masterson’s screenplay demands in highlighting their differences while establishing fleeting moments of fraternal commonality. Lumet is to be credited not only with assembling such a capable central trio but further pushing them to access new depths of talent. Lumet frames much of the action and interaction between the primary castmates with the kind of intimacy that increases the emotional voltage and sense of doom that begins to envelop the family as they try to outrun the dominos they’ve set in motion. The story is told via an interrupted timeline, and Lumet uses the splintered narrative to establish retroactive bursts of context that rain down upon the Hansons and those caught in the auxiliary webs of their actions, as the pace that the director utilizes in communicating these machinations moves relentlessly forward while mirroring the family’s own inescapable descent. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is deserving of a mention among Sidney Lumet’s finest films, as it’s clear that the auteur still has the capacity to connect with his audience and cast alike.

- Brant Miles