Chicago International Film Festival

by Anna Pulley

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet 2007)

From the legendary director of 12 Angry Men, Sidney Lumet brings us a heist film with messy emotional overlaps and teasing insights that are revealed as the plot progresses. Andy Hanson (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is a boorish, pasty financial planner for a large real estate firm in New York whom he has been stealing from to pay for his drug addiction and to escape his lustless marriage with Gina (Marisa Tomei), which is probably the most implausible aspect of the film's many twists. Phillip Seymour Hoffman can't get it up for Marisa Tomei? Right. Increasingly desperate for money and familial acceptance, Andy hatches a plan (it's fool proof, he assures us) to rob a jewelry store with the help of his brother Hank (Ethan Hawke). The catch? The jewelry store is their parents'. Hank is also no stranger to financial hardship, owing three months worth of child-support payments to his icy ex-wife (Amy Ryan). He's also having an affair with Gina unbeknownst to Andy (cue ominous music). The robbery, as you probably guessed, does not go as planned and things escalate wildly out of control as the two brothers struggle to control their secret lives and the consequences of their horrendously awful decisions.

Jumping back and forth in the time surrounding the robbery and told from the perspectives of many of the lead characters, Before plays with sequence to keep the audience perpetually in suspense, and to build up a shit storm like you've never seen, which is delightfully maddening. The tension and resentment between brothers, husbands, wives, parents and children is executed with chilling precision by the lead actors and by Lumet's claustrophobic lens. My main critique of the film is with the female characters' seeming uselessness and oblivion to what is going on around them. Gina is particularly baffling in her role as simpering trophy wife. Perhaps I hold Marisa Tomei to higher standards, but I didn't expect her character to be so one-dimensional. She's basically used as yet another wedge in Hank and Andy's sibling rivalry, which was disappointing. But she is topless quite a few times, which is a nice consolation prize for having to endure her doltishness. But Phillip Seymour Hoffman is also topless quite a few times, so be warned. Andy's rage and self-hatred simmer slowly throughout the film and he manages a great deal of restraint and calm (at first) as the many injustices of his life come to the fore. Despite the film's obvious dramatic elements, it's also quite funny, and screenwriter Kelly Masterson catches you off guard with her subtle humor. For instance, in the scene when Gina confesses she's been having an affair, Andy ends up giving her cab fare to leave him more efficiently. There are also a few funny scenes where Andy, the stoic man's man, is rebuffed by his wispy, gay drug dealer who swishes about in silk robes and takes little jabs at Andy's problems. "My mom just died," says Andy. "Bummer," says the dealer. "Next time make a fucking appointment."

The title comes from the Irish expression, "may you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead." Will the brothers' fates have such luck? Only time will tell.