"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (2007) - Movie Review

“Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” will be one of those few films which regenerate the effect of reading a book. The editing and screenplay have worked out so hard that it is believably rearranged which plays the theme of the film as it supposed to, a mess. How bad a person can put oneself into such a mess that there is no way out? After that small period of gap wherein you just wait to be hunted down, the characters foil up with something more to make it even more devilish, cornered and terribly stuck. Director Sidney Lumet has arranged this piece which is an exhibition of unforgivable sins and dreadful souls to succumb to the devil of unnecessary attention and money.

I have watched Lumet’s “Network”, “Serpico” and “Find Me Guilty”. In each of those there is his presence and his nuances in making us understand the characters. The fashion in his operation towards it is follows the methodical 80’s look. While all those three movies took place in that era, this film is in cell phone age. Yet Lumet decorates the 80’s look with a fashion of randomness and a screenplay giving a recursive feeling. The craft is to give a film which can be as satanic as possible that we the audience has no empathy or sympathy for any characters at all. Even some innocent person gets killed; but we have developed immunity of rest of the characters that we for that time period bring our dark brother in us to do a third shift.

Money is the prime agenda out here for brothers Andy (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and mainly Hank (Ethan Hwake). Andy comes up with a plan he tells with so much ease and carelessness, that he convinces Hank to do it. But the film is not aimed at the anxiety to see the robbery. The second scene gives the act. The film circulates around its ripple nature of events. The events are not linear but in a fashion which resembles Tarantino. And when we think that, they circle it further more. The plan of course is not to confuse us but to make sense of certain behaviour of the characters come in light. There are scenes when Andy needs his focus but in the same scene, Hank might need more presence but it cannot be done perfectly in singular frame of scene. Hence some scenes are shown twice but the camera angles are different some times, the back ground score is different. This results in a product of multiple dimension of one scene. This technique helps to simulate the reading effect of crime novel. In novel though, we ourselves imagine the same content of page in different dimension when there is an unknotting of an event. Lumet just brought it to the screen. He does the imagination twice for us and both the times it is interesting and becomes essential for the film.

Now as such for the characters, the primary players are the three front men of the Hansons, Andy, Hank and their father Charles. Andy and Hank are brothers who tussle but strangely it is the family bonds they share seem to sustain them so long. They do love their Mother Nanette (Rosemary Harris) and Charles (Albert Finney). But it is a crooked love too. Hank is the nurtured and sheltered kid which we get to know. Andy is tough, or seems to be. He manages to over come the fear and this desire being not satisfied. Answers to his monotonous life of boredom and the absence of passion, a passion he defines as wealth of ridiculous amounts. He had the desire to manage jewellery store of his parents which failed. This disappointment which has shattered his dream of pumping riches out of the store manifests itself into an evil and decides on a senseless act of vicious nature.

Redemption is not even in sight and to think of it is another sin too. Hank seems to be the “almost” conscience person but his manipulative brother and pressure of making his child support payments paves him in. At the end of the film, he says to his brother “I have f***ed it all up” and it cannot be more appropriate and meaningful at that point of time.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Albert Finney have this moment at the back yard bench. That is a true origin of Andy being who he is. Hoffman and Hawke take the toughest roles. One is manipulative and the other a pseudo conscience person. The thickness of this layer of guilt is not much difference for Andy and Hank. Hoffman’s Andy is sleazy but neat in his appearance and demeanor. Andy tries to make him look good in appearance as to be that of his brother Hank. But beneath these two are the devils of the same.