Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007): B

Part heist-gone-awry crime pic, part family drama, Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead finds the 83-year-old director once again in fine form after 2005’s dreadful Find Me Guilty. Comfortably ensconced in its maker’s beloved New York milieu, the film charts the build-up to, and fallout from, the robbery of a Westchester mom-and-pop jewelry store orchestrated by shady corporate accountant and heroin addict Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his weak-willed kid brother Hank (Ethan Hawke). Kelly Masterson’s script is grippingly (if somewhat unnecessarily) fractured so that the narrative jumps back and forth between pre- and post-crime action, a structure that eventually reveals not only that the pilfered establishment was owned by Andy and Hank’s mother and father – the former suffering mortal wounds during the stick-up – but also that this family tree’s roots have long been rotted beyond repair. Before the Devil begins with Andy blissfully screwing wife Gina (Marisa Tomei, frequently sans clothes), an appropriate opening given that the subsequent proceedings are a case study in relatives fucking each other (over). Hoffman and Hawke both overact to their hearts content, but Lumet’s direction is crisp and brutal. And if the filmmaker’s desire to elevate his story to the realm of epic tragedy is neither justified nor successful, his latest nonetheless proves to be a triumphantly brisk, bleak B-movie.