Review of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) by Zachary S — 22 Mar 2011

The film opens, literally, with the first shot being one of doggystyle proportions. It's between Hoffman and Tomei, looks pretty real, but looks can be deceiving. After the sex is happiness. They laugh, they talk until Tomei's character feels sad all of a sudden. It sets the tone for the rest of the film because what you're about to see is a tale of two brothers whose lives are about to sink lower than the lowest.

We begin at the day of the robbery of a jewelry store. It fails, but what was the reason for it? The film isn't in chronological order. It skips around to different points of view of three people: Two brothers, Hank and Andy, The father, Charles.

Hank is a washed up loser. He's also sleeping with Andy's wife, Played by Tomei. Hank is in debit, paying child support to his bitch of an ex wife, he's not doing very good. He goes to the devil, which is his brother Andy played by Hoffman, and is given 2,000 in advance to help rob their parents jewelry store. At first Hank doesn't go along with it, but he has literally nothing to lose since his ex wife and daughter both hate his guts, he goes ahead and becomes the devil's minion.

Hank gets a friend, a convict, to help him out with the robbery. Since this friend has been there and done that in the robbery department, he goes ahead inside the jewelry store leaving Hank to be the driver.

It doesn't work out. The mother shoots the guy and he shoots the mother, later putting her in a coma. She's wounded at first giving her the chance to fire one last shot at this asshole killing him as he falls back through the glass door.

"Simple as a pimple, right?" Wrong.

Why does Andy want to Rob his own parents? The thing about Andy is that he was the first born son, leading to the second which was Hank who turned out to be the one who got the most attention. Andy always felt he wasn't part of the "club" that is his family. So why? Why do this? I mean, Andy is a realtor in the high ranks pulling in six figures and yet he has to rob his parents.

The heist is a farce which becomes a tragedy. Well done in the storytelling! The father is stuck with pulling the plug on his wife since she isn't going to make a full recovery. "Pull the plug." The father is pissed off and wants to know who started all of this shit. He becomes Mr. Detective for a while becoming suspicious once the robber has been identified. Something is rotten and it's in the family. All signs eventually point to Andy.

All the characters are unlikeable, but it's hard to not stop watching them because you want to see how even lower they will go. The performances from all involved are intense and the direction from Lumet is well done.