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Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) DVD Review
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) DVD Credits:
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) Directed by:
Sidney Lumet
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) Written by:
Sidney Lumet, Kelly Masterson, Austin Chick
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) Cast:
Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) Released by:
Not available at this time
Region:
1
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) DVD Release Date:
14th April 2008
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Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) Synopsis:

The film will follow two brothers who organize the robbery of their parents' jewelry store. The job goes horribly wrong, triggering off a series of events that send them, their father (Finney) and Hawke's wife (Tomei) hurtling towards a shattering climax.

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) DVD Review:


If there is one certainty about legendary filmmaker Sidney Lumet’s latest film, it is in the effectiveness in which Lumet is able to capture the desperate exasperation of the characters. Before even allowing an introduction to the characters involved, or an explanation about their relationships, we witness the robbery of a family-run jewelry store. In seeing how terribly wrong things turn out during this quick theft we are left with nothing but the explanation and details about the characters involved before and after the robbery, jumping back and forth in time in order to expose the full story piece-by-piece as we follow different characters during important parts of this time period. While this makes for an extremely jarring and shocking opening, the remainder of the film has a difficult time reaching the same level of excitement. Lumet’s famous bank robbery film, Dog Day Afternoon, also digs deep into the lives and motivation of the thief only after the initial action has begun, but somehow Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead isn’t able to convey the same effective structure without creating an often frustratingly disjointed narrative.

Throughout the discombobulated plot of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead we discover that brothers Hank and Andy Hanson (Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman) each have financial problems, not to mention some extremely dysfunctional family relationships, which are only further complicated when they decide to rob the jewelry store owned by their parents. Andy (Hoffman) is the brains behind the operation, but he also is able to come up with plenty of reasons why his involvement would be ill-advised, and instead he sends Hank to do the dirty work along with a criminally experiences friend. Each child worked in the “Mom and Pop” jewelry store in their youth and think it will be victimless crime after the insurance pays their parents off, but neither is able to anticipate the disastrous effects the robbery will have on their life and family. Their father Charles (Albert Finney) is also deeply affected by the robbery, and is determined to figure out how the tragedy began.

Although the violent robbery certainly makes for an exciting and tense early sequence in the film, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is much more of a family affair, quite literally. Despite the fact that Andy is married to Gina (Marisa Tomei), she is having an affair with Hank on the side. Along with the unraveling of this plot twist Andy is also a high-class drug abuser with deep resentment towards his father because of a rough childhood as the eldest child. These portions of the film are remarkably well executed, but the opening fifteen minutes is so jam packed with a graphic sex scene and a violent robbery that it may leave the audience prepared for a much different film.

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Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) DVD review written by: Ryan Izay

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