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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead 15 SCREENINGS Master filmmaker Sidney Lumet directs this absorbing suspense thriller about a family facing the worst enemy of all - itself. Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is an overextended broker who lures his younger brother, Hank (Ethan Hawke) into a larcenous scheme; the pair will rob a suburban "mom-and-pop" jewellery store that appears to be the quintessential easy target. The problem is, the store owners are Andy & Hank's actual mum and dad and, when the seemingly perfect crime goes wrong, the damage lands right at their doorstep... BBFC advice: Contains a strong sex scene and strong language and hard drug use "The veteran director Sidney Lumet may be 84 years old, but in this superb heist thriller, he breaks out the shocks - and the twists - with the ferocity of a hungry youngster. This is the second great film in what's turned out to be an exceptional week, and it's surely a jewel in Lumet's long career: something to stand comparison with his 1975 classic Dog Day Afternoon and perhaps with Reservoir Dogs and Kubrick's The Killing. In its relentless and uncompromising nastiness, cold-sweat tension and fear, its serious engagement with the idea of evil and sin and finally in the way it evolves, persuasively, into a kind of contemporary family tragedy, this is in a different league from other thrillers. The screenplay, by first-timer Kelly Masterson, is razor-sharp. It is the story of two brothers, both deeply charmless individuals, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke. Hoffman is Andy, a real estate executive who has made his way up the corporate ladder and is now, as he is puts it, "pulling down six figures"; Ethan Hawke is a goateed loser with a drinking problem who appears to be permanently unemployed and permanently shouted at by his ex-wife for failing to pay his alimony. When Andy summons Hank for a drink at a neighbourhood bar, his bullying, sneering mannerisms are clearly those of an elder brother who has been accustomed to kicking around his younger sibling all his life... No film could announce more clearly that Crime Doesn't Pay, but this movie is hardly content with that reasonably unambitious message: rather, it shows how evil compulsively replicates itself. And as we are all used to almost every movie, of whatever genre, running out of ideas a long way before the end, it is great to see one which saves its most ingeniously nasty moment for the final curtain: a clever how-to tutorial on killing someone in hospital. After this film was over, I needed hours to relax my tensed-up muscles." "Sidney Lumet’s latest begins with a sex scene raunchy enough to feel unexpected from this director, who’s now well into his 80s; still more surprising, however, is the deftly played post-coital conversation that follows, which reveals that any assumptions made as to the illicit nature of the relationship on screen were a little premature. That undercutting of expectations is characteristic of a subtle, engrossing film which repeatedly insists that life’s far more messily complicated than we’re generally led to believe by the conventions of mainstream cinema. The next scene, an almost unbearably tense robbery at a suburban New York jewellery store, is key: not only does it end disastrously, but it’s the starting point for a rewarding investigation into the lives of those affected by the crime, among them brothers Andy and Hank Hanson (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke), their parents Charles and Nanette (Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris), and Andy’s wife Gina (Marisa Tomei). As the narrative flashes back and forth to reveal the pressures, problems, frustrations and tensions affecting these and other characters, not only does the heist come into sharper focus, but a tangled knot of secrets, lies and betrayals unravels. To reveal more would spoil the enjoyment (careful how you read other reviews!); suffice to say that Lumet, scriptwriter Kelly Masterson and an excellent cast ensure that the various characters and relationships soon attain a texture more akin to real life than Hollywood stereotyping, so that the later, more extreme scenes stretch credibility only slightly. Superior fare, packed with insight and suspense." UK RELEASE 11 January 2008 DIRECTOR Sidney Lumet CAST Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Rosemary Harris RUNNING TIME 117 minutes COUNTRY USA
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