Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

A crime film master's last caper

When a list of great crime film directors is drawn up, there are obvious choices: Scorsese, Tarantino, Mann, and DePalma. (Or if you are a classic film fan: Hitchcock, Huston, or Wellman) But more crime film fans should acknowledge the greatness of Sidney Lumet's contribution to the genre.

Just look at this list of absolute masterpieces: 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Murder on the Orient Express, The Verdict, and Prince and the City. All classics that approached crime and justice from a variety of angles. Lumet was nominated four times for Best Director. Actors in his films were nominated for Academy Awards 18 times. He made comedies and family dramas and character studies, but his crime films are what he should be best remembered for.

Most of Lumet's crime films were not Noirs. Generally, he focused on policemen or attorneys struggling with a broken or corrupt justice system. His legal thrillers were some of the best ever made. But his final film was a Neo-Noir and it was a good one: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

Brothers Andy Hanson (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank Hanson (Ethan Hawke) plot to rob their parents' jewelry store. The robbery is Hoffman's idea; he has embezzled funds from his job as a real estate accountant to fund the lifestyle of he and his wife (Marisa Tomei) and regulators are closing in. Hawke has his own financial pressures; he is a divorced dad and his ex-wife is badgering him for past due child support. He is losing the respect of his daughter because he can't pay for anything.

Hoffman leaves his brother to handle the robbery. Hawke makes the mistake of hiring a dirtbag acquaintance to carry out the robbery and things go tragically wrong. His careless planning of the robbery comes back to haunt him and the efforts of he and his brother to cover their tracks just wind up compounding things and more death follows.

The characters in this movie are all dysfunctional. Hawke is a true loser, a passive aggressive, low-level worker who can't meet his obligations in life. Hoffman is a malignant narcissist who retreats into heroin use to numb the pain of his crumbling marriage and life. Albert Finney plays their father, a cold and abusive man who recognizes too late the damage he has done to his family.

Like any Sidney Lumet film, the cast is fantastic. Hoffman and Finney in particular give amazing performances.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead isn't perfect. There is a plot thread involving a CD that goes nowhere. The ending seems incomplete, because there is no resolution for Hawke's character. Marisa Tomei's character feels underdeveloped.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead includes several elements of the Noir template. Flawed characters are drawn into the world of crime and their choices shatter their placid lives and ensure their doom. The police are practically non-existent. There are several scenes of Finney's frustration with his attempts to reach the detective investigating the robbery, never getting past voicemail of the never-seen cop. Like many classic Noirs, the police only show up at the end, to collect the bodies.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is isn't a heist film, per se. A heist film spends considerable time showing the planning of the crime; in this film the lack of planning is the reason everything falls apart. Chance puts the wrong person in the wrong place and Hawke's dirtbag accomplice is allowed to bring a loaded gun into a job that doesn't really require one. Hawke allows others to see him with the dirtbag. Evidence is left behind. It's exactly what you would expect from a congenital loser.

But like any good heist film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is really all about how the crime goes wrong and the aftermath of failure. In this case, the aftermath is confined mostly to the two brothers' family. It's the enclosed nature of the trauma and guilt that is so damaging to everyone involved.

I should point out that Lumet chooses to unfold the story in non-linear fashion. He moves the viewpoint between the two brothers and the father, going back and forth in time. Scenes are repeated but from different perspectives, filling in the story and filling out the characters. It's very effective in building the threads of the story to the tragic climax.

In the course of reviewing Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, I noticed several Lumet crime films that I haven't seen, namely The Morning After, Q & A and Night Falls on Manhattan. I'm putting them on my list; they may show up in future posts.