Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
May 2008 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: Blu-ray/DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

This disc has one of the best production featurettes I’ve ever seen. Yes, some of it is the usual back patting: "Boy, he/she/it was great to work with." But the rest is Sidney Lumet talking about his craft, and to hear him talk about how he makes a movie is an exhilarating experience. Lumet will be 84 years old in June, but he comes across more like 50 or 60. His enthusiasm is infectious, and with Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead he has made anything but an "old man’s movie."

In case you missed reading about this movie during its theatrical run (and well you might, as it was one of the most under-hyped masterpieces of the year), the plot goes something like this. There’s a family with two brothers and a mom and dad who run a small jewelry store in a typical US mall. The older son, Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman), can’t get it on with his sexpot wife (Marissa Tomei) unless they are vacationing, and he needs money so he can settle debts and escape the rat race he’s in. He regularly visits a drug dealer for heroin maintenance injections. He goes to his younger brother, Hank (Ethan Hawke), with the idea of committing a robbery. Unknown to him, Hank is keeping Andy’s wife sexually happy once a week. Andy has trouble convincing Hank to help him because the target of the heist is to be the jewelry store run by their parents.

That’s no doubt why Hank, without asking Andy, gets an accomplice to help him, who, also unknown to Andy, replaces the idea of a toy gun with a very real one. To further complicate matters, the woman who usually opens the store is not on duty. It is, instead, the boy’s Mom (Rosemary Harris). Things go bad, then they go worse, then they go really bad. It’s pure melodrama, which Lumet defends with vigor, insisting that his movie is not a crime drama but a good old-fashioned over-the-top melodrama, which is what he wanted.

It’s a dream cast that inhabits this movie. Hoffman just keeps going from success to success, reminding us with each new triumph what a versatile actor he is. Hawke is now too old to be a teen idol any longer, but it’s OK, as he has real acting ability. Tomei could get by on her looks, but she is also a consummate actress. The scene she has alone in a car with Hoffman is a shattering experience. Then there’s Albert Finney as the father. This is the guy who made his name in Tom Jones in 1963, and since then he’s just been going from one success to another as an actor’s actor. Everyone acts right to the top without going over.

The movie was shot in HD. Lumet extols the new process in the featurette; it’s refreshing to hear an octogenarian keeping up with progress instead of being stuck in his old ways. The colors are overly bright and washed, the film looks downright harsh at times, but its suits the story and is what Lumet wanted, and that look has been faithfully transferred to Blu-ray. The sharpness of HD can really be appreciated in this film. It doesn’t pop and bloom the way some blockbusters do, but it allows Lumet’s careful manipulation of foreground and background focus to be seen as it was intended. The sound is mostly up front, the dialogue singularly clear, and the funky music clean and transparent. It’s one of those sound mixes that is so natural that you don’t notice it as such.

In addition to the featurette there’s a commentary track with Lumet, Hoffman, and Hawke and a trailer. This is one disc where the extras are a must. You will come away with the awareness that Lumet is one of the great directors, but you will also know how he works and what his style is and how it is different from that of others. Good for us that he is at work on another movie right now.

• Go Back