Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Rating R Formats DVD Genre drama Starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney Directed by Sidney Lumet Publisher ThinkFilm

Before the Devil knows you’re Dead tells the story of two brothers in financial troubles who decide to rob a jewelry store. Their plan is simple and safe; to rob a well insured mom and pop jewelry store in the suburbs.

The film starts with an older woman in the middle of opening up the store when a masked robber comes in. The robber is about to leave with all the valuables when she shoots him, he fires back, and then she kills him. When his body flies out the front window we meet Ethan Hawke’s character, Hank. As he drives away from the scene of the crime he says one name, ‘Andy’.

Through flashbacks we learn that Andy coerced Hank into robbing the store. They are not just robbing any mom and pop jewelry store, but their mom and pop’s jewelry store. Of course the plan was that no one would get hurt, and their mom was not supposed to be working that day but a series of unforeseeable events led to tragedy.

Because Hank was too scared to rob the place, he paid a thug to rob it. This thug brought a gun. The woman who was supposed to work that morning had a last minute engagement, so Hank’s mom had to work. On top of that, Andy is extorting money from his work to fuel his heroin addiction. His wife, Gina, played by Marisa Tomei is having an affair with Hank. Hank is also a divorced father behind on his child support and generally considered a loser by his former wife and kid.

Clearly the producers and Sidney Lumet thought this was a recipe for success. But, it ends up being a muddled and boring mess. The backwards-spiraling ridiculous structure cannot even save the film from climaxing to a totally obvious ending. Sidney Lumet has directed some of the greatest films in American film history like The Verdict, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and 12 Angry Men. But he has also directed some of the more forgettable or just plain old bad, like The Wiz. Before the Devil knows you’re Dead is not one of his best, but it’s also not his worst. It falls in the forgettable region. That’s not to say that he did anything especially wrong in his direction, on the contrary the performances are very good and the film is constructed well. The problem with this film lies in the script; although it attempts to be shocking it’s not very interesting. The melodrama that he tried so hard to portray does not inject enough drama to make the film work.

There are two features that redeem this DVD; the feature on Sidney Lumet’s creation of Before the Devil knows you’re Dead which contains some fascinating insight into Lumet’s process as a filmmaker. The other feature is the commentary track under the film by Lumet, Hoffman, and Hawke.

Even though this film is somewhat of a disaster, the experience and insight that Lumet and company brings to the commentary track goes beyond this film. For those enrolled in DVD film school, its worth checking out.