Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

A great thriller with a more than a touch of morality play within. The action is taut, and skillful interleaving of narratives keeps the pulse up. This one stayed with me for many days. A small caveat- it is very bleak - definitely no feel good factor here.

it had potential but it felt boring and long, While I enjoy the narrative of the story, I have to say that this movie's style is all wrong. The jumping back and forth in time structure makes it feel all over the place and, indeed, that it's a mess. It would have been much better if it had played out completely linear. The look is cold, the style holds you back from the action. The direction is one of my least favorite things about the film,

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is an undeniably well acted and well made film. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, and Marisa Tomei's boobs (probably the leader for screentime), all turn in great performances. The film is also a phenomenal look at a broken family led to the point of desperation to lift themselves up, but winds up tearing them apart even more. As a crime thriller, it is solid and wholly entertaining. However, the film undoes itself with its non-linear structure. Annoying and useless in this film, the non-linear storytelling distracts more than it entertains. Even worse, the way in which it is told makes no sense with it jumping all over the place with little aim. The thrills the film could have produced are killed through the same means as the film's climactic parts come far too early to actually carry any weight. After this, we are stuck watching these people we do not like come to grips with what happened and reveal more dealing with it, but since we know how it turned out, it all feels pointless because then we can assume how they will all react to the results. There is tension, merely predictability. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead presents good acting, but shoots itself in the face repeatedly with its curious use of non-linear storytelling.

This film is about 2 brothers Andy and Hank (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke respectively) who plot to rob their parents jewellery store. The robbery is initially told from 2 perspectives for both brothers and later we get a third perspective of the robbery through their father Charles (played by Albert Finney). I thought the film started off well as the robbery unfolds and we start to see the brother's motivations behind the robbery. The trouble is that once we get past the initial premise, the film begins to become repetitive and a bit tedious. The second half of the film was just filled with squabbling and melodrama and never really seemed to go anywhere by this point I was getting pretty bored with the film. I was ultimately disappointed with this film which is a shame as it started out well and ended up being only an average film at best.

There’s a film making device that not even the sometimes overrated Kubrick could make work (IE; check out his heist movie: ‘The Killing’) It’s the tired old flashback device of repeating the same scene over from several viewpoints, even when it’s totally pointless (as it is here). First-time writer Kelly Masterson and veteran director Sidney Lumet must have felt everyone will have forgotten that padded-out earlier old flick, thinking they could get away with ‘borrowing’ the idea for their dreary heist movie. This one is a ‘doozy’ and should please those who live their lives thinking the best time of year is the bleak mid-winter - during a power failure and severe food shortage. Writer and director must have been so aware of their over-stretched plot, that they may have thought (wrongly) by starting their movie with a sensationalised, voyeuristic porno type shot, featuring two of their stars rear-end copulating - will shock jaded viewers into thinking it exciting and modern. Trouble is, the whole thing is sleazily set up and ultimately unappealing. Pity the poor 40ish Marisa Tomei (even though she looks very good) is shown in 80% of her scenes more than half naked – talk about used and abused. Lumet would have been better to have retired before he was reduced to ending his career at this merge point. A strong hard-working cast delivers their distraught lines with conviction - while given situations that just about defies any close examination by intelligent audiences. The pathetic characters that inhabit this story are just too difficult to feel anything for. I’m not going to give away any plot details here but it’s this depressingly overstated type of movie making that appeals to festival in-crowds and certain critics. It’s also a reminder, for those who have forgotten what great classic writing used to do with genuine human tragedy. Here, it’s shredded and reduced to pathetic characters and ridiculously laboured situations - designed to manipulate the audience into thinking it way far better than it is (some will – many won't)