Hoffman and Hawke play 2 brothers. Because they need money, they plan a robbery, that goes wrong... very wrong.
Hoffman and Hawke's performances are quite good, so is Marisa Tomei's and the other supportive actors'.
The script isn't that original, you can predict what will happen, and it's really too bad, because there were many possibilities, and unfortunately the scriptwrit... read more
Hard to talk about this movie but is a must watch. Very interesting and with amazing performances. I was expecting less but wow, very good. I'm still shocked.
Likes: The performances by Ethan Hawke, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman were awesome. Theys should have gotten a nomination for them. The story was very good. Michael Shannon had a really good part.
Dislikes: It got old fast. By this I mean it was just the samething over and over again. Now I know it was the style of the film, to show what a certain person was doing at a certain time. ... read more
Description:Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is an exceptionally dark story about a crime gone wrong and the complicated reasons behind it. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are outstanding as brothers whose mutual love-hate relationship subtly colors their agreement to rob their own parents’ jewelry store, and more exSidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is an exceptionally dark story about a crime gone wrong and the complicated reasons behind it. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are outstanding as brothers whose mutual love-hate relationship subtly colors their agreement to rob their own parents’ jewelry store, and more explicitly affects the anxious aftermath of their villainy when their mother (Rosemary Harris) ends up shot. Hoffman’s steely, emotionally locked-up Andy, despite pulling down six figures as a corporate executive, is supporting an expensive drug habit while trying to leave the country with his depressed wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). Hank (Hawke), a whipped dog of low intelligence, owes back alimony and child support to his ex-spouse. Both men need money and agree to rip off their parents' business, a decision that goes awry and puts both men in various kinds of jeopardy while their mother remains comatose and their father (Albert Finney) lurches along trying to make sense of anything. Writer Kelly Masterson's screenplay employs a perhaps now-overly-familiar time-shifting tactic, jumping around the chronology of the story's events and replaying scenes from different vantage points. The effect is a little tedious but successfully deconstructs the film's drama in a way that shows how such terrible events are directly linked to family dysfunction, old wounds between parent and child, between siblings, that fester into full-blown tragedy. Eighty-three-year-old director Lumet (Serpico) employs bleached colors and scenes of blunt sexuality and violence, adding to the moral rudderlessness and banality of this airless world. If Devil feels a little reductive and insistently grim, it is also a generally persuasive work by an old master. --Tom Keogh ... (more)(less)
"Watched on: 4/8/13
This is a well made and very well acted film. My problem is that I simply didn't like any of the characters. I could care less if they lived or died and I just couldn't get into the film because of that. "
"With their consecutive lives falling apart, two brothers scheme to rob a jewelry store owned by their parents. Hoping that the money will improve each others situation with the belief that the insurance will cover the loss to the store.
However, this being a movie, you know things are going to go awry. As the plans, then the robbery itself fall apart,
the brothers find their relationship with each other, with their father & just with their lives falling deeper in dysfunction.
A great film with a"
CD Smiles added this to a list 2 months, 1 week ago
"With their consecutive lives falling apart, two brothers scheme to rob a jewelry store owned by their parents. Hoping that the money will improve each others situation with the belief that the insurance will cover the loss to the store.
However, this being a movie, you know things are going to go awry. As the plans, then the robbery itself fall apart,
the brothers find their relationship with each other, with their father & just with their lives falling deeper in dysfunction.
A great film with a"
"With their consecutive lives falling apart, two brothers scheme to rob a jewelry store owned by their parents. Hoping that the money will improve each others situation with the belief that the insurance will cover the loss to the store.
However, this being a movie, you know things are going to go awry. As the plans, then the robbery itself fall apart,
the brothers find their relationship with each other, with their father & just with their lives falling deeper in dysfunction.
A great film with a"
"The movie only showed me the things I've read before on the blurb. And I predicted the few little things in between too. So it was not very interesting for me. Furthermore the cuttings between the sequences were bad and the time leaps seemed purposeless."
The Cinephile added this to a list 9 months, 3 weeks ago
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