Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Josh Staman is our man with the movie news...or something. Now he's out in L.A. rolling with the big folks, or not with the WGA thing going on. But anyway here's a movie he watched.

Josh Staman
Los Angeles Nov 16th 2007
Calling Sidney Lumet’s BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD the most overrated movie of the year isn’t entirely apropos, and those words linger on my tongue, bitter like horseradish. It’s not because it isn’t, but because in all honesty – IT AIN’T A MOVIE! It’s a screenwriting exercise that a sophomore collegiate won’t shut up about: because it wrote itself; because it’s so hardcore; because Quentin might jump back and forth in time, but this one’s about real people with real problems, man! It was written by a “Kelly Masterson” and although the script is certainly competent in its…(how shall I put this?)…getting-a-very-good-grade-in-Screenwriting II-ness, I would bet money that Kelly is a dude. This is conjecture and unnecessary in reviewing the film, but BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD reeks of either coked-up “hardcore”-fanboy or mouth-breathing cinephiliac collegiate who just can’t let that one script go.

Well, good for Kelly! Not only have “his” dreams been realized and “his” script is off the ground, but with Sidney Lumet attached! And Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Rosemary Harris, and Michael Shannon no less! And – again, if that wasn’t enough for Kelly “Bomber!” Masterson (we all used to call “him” Bomber. It’s a story.) – the critics cannot get enough of this put-on. Well, the party ends now; I can honestly say were BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD not an inexplicably overrated crime saga to begin with, I doubt I would’ve seen more than the faintest of recommendatory virtues in the finished product had I gone in fresh.

To start with the good: Philip Seymour Hoffman is quite good in a limited role that plays like a miasma of pseudo-Mametian indulgences that the man knows exactly what to do with. Potentially even better is Ethan Hawke with a sparse role that comes very close to barely existing (witness his final moments in the film, or, rather, don’t) and turns it into a winning turn of amiable loserdom. And while I wouldn’t call anything Sidney Lumet does in this film revelatory, the man knows how to bring out the best in his performers, especially in Albert Finney, who isn’t so much good as a living actor (he’s not) but AMAZING for a dead one; and let it be said, the man can cover a scene well and compensate for textural shortcomings so much that the film almost appears to be about something. Let it be said that although shot on the Genesis, the camera used for SUPERMAN RETURNS and the best-looking digital features around, the movie looks like ass.

And then there’s Marisa Tomei…

…’s boobies. We’ve been waiting quite some time for this…how shall I put this?...boobies, and it’s a tribute to her acting talent (and boobies!) that she comes across as a completely organic, interesting character despite being given nothing to do by Bomber, as she simultaneously and inexplicably beds brothers Hoffman and Hawke, of which I have nothing on that genetic discrepancy. The very first shot in the film is a graphic and mundane view of sex and humanity, and Hoffman takes her from behind and we watch the ordeal play out as Hoffman watches himself, and then they recoil in post-coital bliss…and the damn thing, while repugnant, almost works. She gives off a glow in this film and a pinch of arsenic and vinegar in even the pithiest off-glances and one-liners.

And yet she, and really everyone, is let down by the drab, detached script that is so needlessly convoluted, derived from contrivance, and pedestrian in span that those involved requested – nay! – DEMANDED the use of “Flutter Editing” to piece the damn thing together. Flutter Editing: last refuge of the tripped-out, that you may recall from EASY RIDER, and NOWHERE EVER AGAIN UNTIL RIGHT FUCKING NOW! If Flutter Editing is what is needed to piece your movie together, it’s time to start free associative writing on a napkin outside a Coffee Bean with your double-shot. Who knows? You might end up with something that is heartfelt, true, and honest…unlike BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD.