« It Takes A Village… | Home | To Live and Die in West Texas »
The Devil You Know is Better…
By bukkhead | November 19, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD
Written by Kelly Masterson
Directed by Sydney Lumet
Rated R
119 mins.
The title of Sydney Lumet’s latest film come from an old Irish blessing: “May you be in heaven for 30 seconds before the Devil knows you’re dead.” It’s this theme of who knows what that carries the entire movie. Although the audience at any moment knows more than the characters in the movie, nothing is ever full revealed until the last act, leaving one to decide if these characters can be forgiven for the ignorance upon which they’ve acted.
Businessman Andy Hanson convinces his brother Hank to rob a mom and pop jewelry store in the suburbs of upstate New York. Both are down on their luck and in desperate need of the cash. According to Andy, no one gets hurt, as insurance will cover the cost of the robbery. Of course Hank is reluctant, his fatal flaw, and Andy bullies him into finally agreeing. But it’s Hank’s easily being bullied that leads him to hire an accomplice, and of course, as another Irishman taught us, these best laid schemes often go awry.
What follows is Andy’s disintegration, as Hank himself remains too spineless to even suffer from his own indignities. Andy’s actions become increasingly erratic, as his best laid plans become less considered, and more impulsive. Through this fall his relationship with his father is revealed, showing just how deeply sown are the discords of a bullied childhood. Andy is a kind of Laertes to Hank’s Hamlet, though this is a movie that depends as much, if not more, on direction than on character development.
The film uses two techniques to build tension around this idea of the characters and the audience possessing different, but overlapping sets of facts. Scenes are shown out of chronological order, and often shown twice, with overlapping time frames so that you may see the beginning of one scene, and then later see it from the middle and then further. As well, Lumet uses long takes, with actors moving in and out of frame, sometimes with their back to action. And as the tension is built, release comes not in gratification, as in victory or triumph, but in mere realization: at last the truth is know, although the consequences are terrible.
As Andy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman delivers the kind of work we’ve come to expect from him: solid, methodical even, too convincingly cruel. Ethan Hawke, as Hank, has come into a role we have not seen him portray in a long time, perfectly balanced against Hoffman. Marisa Tomei plays Andy’s wife Gina, in a role that seems almost gratuitous: she’s naked during half of her scenes, and doesn’t seem to play much into the plot at all.
Despite this, first time screen-writer Kelly Masterson has done an excellent job of holding together the fractured time line of an otherwise intricate plot. In Sydey Lumet’s season hands, these intricacies come across not as a contrivance, but as the perfect vehicle for evading that devil, keeping him in the dark, for at least 30 more seconds.
(An edited version of this review was printed in the Newport Mercury.)
Topics: Movies | 1 Comment »
February 25th, 2008 at 7:39 am
Hey Jason !! I saw the movie and yeah it was pretty good, I thought the end was a bit controversial… but hey can a family be so unfortunate that it has to go through this ?