| BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD (2007) : S.Lumet : 6/10 |
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| Thursday, 10 July 2008 | |
 I managed to miss Before the Devil Knows You're Dead during its run in British cinemas, but was strongly recommended to catch it on DVD by a friend whose tastes often closely match my own. During a discussion of We Own the Night, he suggested I check out the critically-lauded Before the Devil - both pictures being blood-spattered tales of fraternal strife, set in New York City. But whereas We Own the Night deals with a pair of brothers from a family of cops, Before the Devil - its horror-movie-ish title apparently derived from an old Irish toast ("May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead," though some sources prefer "three days" as the period in question) - is about siblings whose activities place them firmly on the wrong side of the law. Hank (Ethan Hawke) and Andy Hanson (Philip Seymour Hoffman) find themselves in tough financial straits as they approach forty. Smooth-talking financier Andy convinces his more neurotic brother that the quickest route to security is to rob the jewellery story owned by their elderly parents (Albert Finney, Rosemary Harris.) Initially horrified by this proposal, Hank eventually succumbs to Andy's skills of persuasion - but the heist is badly botched, resulting in dire consequences for the entire family... I've now seen We Own the Night twice on the big screen, and my only viewing of Before the Devil was late at night via DVD, but regardless of the medium I can't share my pal's preference for the latter over the former. Octogenarian director Sidney Lumet - whom many predicted to obtain an Oscar nomination for this rather unexpected comeback - elicits predictably strong performances from this high-calibre cast, though Harris is barely recognisable and oddly underused in what is, Spiderman stints apart, only her fourth movie of the present decade. Michael Shannon has barely more screen-time as the tough-nut brother-in-law of the small-time criminal Hank recruits for the robbery, but he dominates every single second with a performance that confirms him as perhaps the most reliably impressive of American cinema's character-actors (a crown that Hoffman has now arguably forsaken now that he's moved, post-Oscar, more squarely into leading roles.) The real star of the show, however, is emphatically composer Carter Burwell - whose simple, resonant score (an ominous, bass-heavy, strings-dominated affair that subtly incorporates Irish themes) is so evocative and magnetic that I often found myself impatiently waiting for it to fade back in. Though perhaps a little "noticeable" for those purists who reckon the best scores are the ones that you don't actually register while watching a film, Burwell's superlative work - for some inexplicable reason, unavailable on CD - is easily the most Oscar-worthy element here (the fact that the Academy have never nominated Burwell, not even for Fargo, is yet another stain on that tarnished institution's reputation.) Ironically enough, Burwell only stepped in at the eleventh hour after when the score provided by Lumet's first choice, Richard Rodney Bennett (who hasn't done a movie score since being knighted in 1998), was deemed unsuitable. Lumet and Bennett worked together - with Finney - on Murder on the Orient Express (Bennett's score was Oscar-nominated, as it happens), but it's Lumet's next picture, Dog Day Afternoon (1975), to which Before the Devil has been most often compared, as both movies deal with the aftermath of a disastrous robbery. Dog Day Afternoon was, however, based on real incidents and written by Frank Pierson, previously responsible for the likes of Cat Ballou and Cool Hand Luke. The entirely fictional Before the Devil, by contrast, is the first screen credit for Kelly Masterson, who must presumably carry the can for the script's cumbersome time-hopping structure - each transition accomplished via a particularly jarring freeze-frame/flash-frame gimmick. This technique certainly isn't to the advantage of a rather overwrought tale that strains a little too hard for the irony and profundity associated with those Greek tragedies in which families are ripped apart by hubris, greed and betrayal. We Own the Night may not exactly be a model of small-scale restraint, of course, but at least in that instance the histrionics are placed firmly at the service of solid character- and plot-development. Before the Devil, however, feels too much like a pumped-up, sexed-up TV movie (the pre-credits sequence even begins in media coitus) given unwarranted class and gravitas by its heavyweight cast, veteran director and superlatively on-form composer. Neil Young 15.July.08 -------------------------------------------------------------------- USA 112m (BBFC timing) director : Sidney Lumet (Find Me Guilty, Friends and Family, Gloria [1999], Critical Care, etc etc etc) editor : Tom Swartwout (Find Me Guilty, Friends and Family, Gloria [1999], Critical Care.) seen on DVD in Belmont, Durham, 9.July.08 with thanks to K. and S. Seacroft |
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