Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead Review

Trundling through the directed filmography of Sidney Lumet, I’m struggling to come across a film of his that hasn’t totally enthralled me. His earliest works are as strong as his final outings, a director that provided consistency to all of his projects. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead pairs this formidable director with a parade of actors who, until very recently, had crafted some of their all-time greatest works. It’s hard not to lose yourself in such a tremendously simple, yet extraordinarily rewarding premise. A bank job gone wrong, and the intermingling stories that lead up to the build-up and fallout of two brothers looking to fix their financial problems in one quick job.

A somewhat broken narrative paves the way for our variously intertwining stories, and that’s the most difficult part of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. All pacing within the film feels jittery and disconnected from the surrounding scenes, but by the end of it all, there’s a nicely layered effect to most of the stories. The preceding moments and early stages of this can be a little hard to acclimatise too, though, with Ethan Hawke and Phillip Seymour Hoffman dominating these scenes with thankfully excellent performances. It’s a real slow burner, one that inarguably keeps the audience involved, but one that could do with a bit more energy.

Comparatively, the second half of the film ramps up the pace well. Lumet’s direction feels cold, often distant from his characters. He paints a nice enough picture of two desperate protagonists that will stop at nothing to clamber out of the hole they’ve dug themselves into. They’re not detestable individuals, they’re struggling to keep their heads above the water, and the line between likeable and detestable blurs rather nicely. Hoffman and Hawke have great chemistry with one another, expectantly brilliant performances from the pair of them is what we’ve come to expect, and pairing them together is a sure-fire success.

Why Albert Finney was never awarded larger fanfare or Academy Awards success is beyond me. He’s an integral part of more movies than you would first expect, and Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead shows him at his very best. A great supporting role to the narrative Hawke and Hoffman follow, Finney lingers in the shadows with a spotlight-stealing piece. Ultimately, the film is one that bases its highs on the ties of family, and its lows on what might happen if those bonds are broken beyond repair. The handling of guilt and deceit shows a great maturity for a film that could have devolved into a generic heist thriller rather rapidly.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead has more story than it knows what to do with, but the bulk of the writing and the performances that hold them together make it through unscathed. Outstanding performances at every turn lock the key details down, and with some smoother pacing in these earlier scenes, it could’ve been quite the phenomenal piece of film. Lumet manages to come out on top yet again with a sharp thriller toying with the emotions of family ties.