Review of the Film Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (15)
Warning: this review contains some plot spoilers. The rating is out of five stars.
In a word, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is an intense film. I can’t remember the last time that I actually found myself struggling to watch what was happening on screen, and not because of any excessive blood, gore, or other ‘pornographic’ content. The drama, tension, and the suffering of the main characters is so great, and the heat and pressing nature of their constantly multiplying dilemmas just don’t let up, not even for a second; and when there’s the slightest whiff of a more positive ending to a particular plot thread, that plot thread is cut off and left where it is. Basically, do not watch this film if you want to relax or are feeling in any way depressed or suicidal! If you are wanting to relax, or are depressed/suicidal though, find a way to snap out of it quickly… and watch this film in the next one hundred and seventeen minutes that you have free. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a thoroughly captivating film told with such classy professionalism that it’s few pitfalls can be forgiven in almost an instant, because of it’s unrelenting bounty of mesmerising intellect stimulating sequences!
From the off, we are told in no unclear terms that this isn’t going to be an easy ride. The very first scene is a rather startling and sobering sex scene, far more graphic and lengthy than your average such scene in most of today’s at least relatively mainstream films. Any feelings of being comfortable or thinking that you know what to expect are instantly shattered by this quite jarring and seemingly unnecessarily drawn out opening scene. But, it’s purpose I believe, justifying it’s graphic and ‘long’, duration-wise nature, is as I have described. To get us in the mood…
This film definitely doesn’t want to leave it’s audience feeling like it’s had a good time, it does not want to please you or entertain you in any way that your average cinema fodder might settle to do. But please, please please do not take that as a warning not to see the film… I’ve said it already but I’m going to say it again even more unambiguously! See this film, now…!
I do not want to destroy the delicate experience that the film creates for the viewer, a web of pain, a tale of how different people deal with crazily pressured situations, and so I will just give you this brief and decently plot spoiler free outline of what the film is about in basic story terms: two estranged brothers attempt to rob their parents suburban jewellery store… and things just don’t go to plan one little bit.
I am not yet very familiar with the work of this film’s famous director, Sidney Lumet. There are a few of his films that I have been wanting to see for a very long time, and now I shall be prioritising them even more. This is definitely a director who’s work it is worth looking into. Do it!
One of the main highlights of this film from a less story-based aspect, is the acting. Philip Seymour Hoffman has instantly gone from being ‘one’ of the best actors working today in my mind, to possibly the very best currently working out there anywhere in the world. He is such a recognisable actor yet he still manages to become so vividly and totally the characters who he is portraying, and in this film he plays a character who I haven’t seen him play anything very much like before I don’t think, and I really was way beyond the point of thinking to myself, “I’m watching Philip Seymour Hoffman on the big screen here, my isn’t he good…” He is his characters. …And if he ever plays another one like this he may just a have a genuine heart attack on camera and die… No, not in a bizarre display of extreme dedication to method acting, but out sheer failing to be able any longer to keep from buckling under the strain of living the woes and fears of another person not even himself, for the sake of art! When you see this man screaming and crying on screen, it chokes you up; end of story.
Of course the other actors, including Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei must get their special mentions, but in the light of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s bright and shining star it is a little hard to concentrate on thinking of ways to describe their also excellent talents in quite the same way. Suffice to say though, they are all more than worth watching. If all of the acting quality that this film displays were divided between all of the other films released on the main circuit in an average year, then it wouldn’t be so easy to guess who’s getting what in the acting categories at Oscar time!
The performers are all helped enormously by the truly great script writing that has gone into this film, and much credit must go to Kelly Masterson, who’s debut screenplay this film was shot from.
I mentioned earlier about some pitfalls that this film understandably does have; I say understandably because this is not a film crafted by God himself, and so is therefore open to the possibility of not being entirely one hundred percent perfect. The main things I will say, if they can really be called main things on account of their being such small problems to begin with, are some pacing issues and editing quibbles mainly around the mid, leaning towards end section of Before the Devil Knows You‘re Dead. A few scenes feel just a little too long and slow for I’m sure some people’s tastes, but their quietness and stillness in the dark light of all that is going on contributes massively the films taut and demonic atmosphere. Also, the films clever way of unfolding the plot in a non-chronological bit by bit format, tying up loose ends here and there and explaining what led to what and so on, does by about three quarters of the way through the picture begin to feel maybe a little too clever for it’s own good; perhaps a few segments could have been combined into one instead of being placed at opposite end of the film’s running time; and finally, by certain points in the film the cruelty of the writer to his own characters seems to become a little like adding insult to injury… but really, these are extremely minor gripes indeed that most people would probably believe are best left ignored, as they are equivalent to particularly small black spots on the sun, and who can’t see the sun for the black spots on it…?
So, that is all; see the film, if you think that you're mind is up to it.
Rating : *****
Written by,
.Peter.D.Marsay.
Originally completed: 26/03/08.
Updated: 28/03/08.
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