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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/21/2007 : 22:06:51
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Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
Sidney Lumet has long ago transcended competency, turning his solid and reliable output into an art form. He controls every detail and knows exactly how to fit them all together to construct a finished film that's bound to engage.
He's been directing fiction for nearly 60 years, so -- between his early US television work throughout the 1950s to big screen classics like The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network -- he'd better have learned something by now. And with this quirky robbery gone wrong you can see just what that might be.
First of all this is one of the most assured pieces of filmmaking you'll see this year and in many a year to come. First-time screenwriter Kelly Masterson's script bops back and forth, which might be confusing, but in Lumet's capable hands we're guided to learn more and more, to care more and more about the principal characters with each time-hop. It's an intriguing narrative device and wholly appropriate to serve the film's themes of family deception, betrayal, and the unintended consequences of our actions. In fact, though the film constantly depicts human weakness, it's quite a moral tale.
I won't give away any of the plot, because you really have to make your own discoveries along the way. Suffice to say the story grabs you by the throat and unfolds with the same kind of twists and surprises that the Coen brothers use in films like Miller's Crossing or Raising Arizona. The characters aren't quite so spikey but they're pretty saturated with middle-class angst. These are people in trouble with themselves.
Populating the all-too-familiar landscape are a family who are decidedly less than honest with each other. At first you don't even know they are a family, but that's one of the joys of watching ... things aren't explained right away and you're dragged deeper and deeper into the story. In fact you become complicit, which is the point.
No, I'm not suggesting you'd necessarily do any of the things this family gets up to. You might - hey I don't know you - but that's not what I mean. I mean you and I and everyone we know is capable. The film reflects a society that a priori makes us capable. The fact that we exercise choices from moment to moment makes this a moral movie.
In roles I won't define and which, to be fair are much better written for men than women, it's the three major principles who stand out. Albert Finney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Ethan Hawke under Lumet's direction judge the progression of their characters so precisely that every time we learn that little bit extra, we've got a solid bedrock of real people to build on. And that makes everything - no matter how apparently ludicrous - make perfect sense.
No, the film hasn't wider ambitions beyond its subversion of a genre, but it's a truly accomplished piece of work.
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Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
