BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD

Now here is an American crime story for the ages. I say American because there are notes here that are particularly those of this country, along the lines of O’Neill, where shame and greed and remorse and randomness all play supporting roles. Only in America could two men rob their parents, only to be struck with guilt that it was mom running the story that day, instead of dad. Oh, and she knows where the gun is, and tries to be a hero. Oops.

Before The Devil Knows Your Dead is as good and depressing as No Country for Old Men, but it has something that filmed lacked. And if I knew what it was, I’d tell you. I thought maybe it was the fact that it was a lack of good men facing evil, like Zodiac. But no, here are men just as bad and doomed and unlikable as No Country, but I find myself more pulled into their stories. Scene after scene, 3 characters walk into a room and you have no idea which 2 of them will walk out.

You deserve to walk in with as little info as possible- I’ve probably already said too much- but suffice to say that Ethan Hawke has never been better, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is batting a thousand between this and Charlie Wilson’s War, and Albert Finney is… well, it’s relatively easy for a sad old man character to be powerful, but hard to make him this specific. The story cuts back and forth between these two brothers and their father, the women who orbit their lives, and where they were before and after a robbery. The robbery goes bad, as many film robberies tend to do, but in a way so simple and so spectacular it’s some kind of genius.

Once it goes bad, things get worse. The brothers needed money before the robbery, and they need it even more afterwards. To quote the last funny movie Chevy Chase made in the past fifteen years: “What I don't understand is... when you owe a bookie a lot of money, and he, say, blows off one of your toes, you still owe him the money.” Something along those lines happens here, as twist after twist happens to screw these crooks. They deserve it, but you feel for them- after all, it sounded so plausible on paper.

There are many virtuoso moments. Hoffman’s monologue after shooting up. The way the camera glides over the table as Finney makes a huge decision. Hawke’s eyes when he realizes that he’s picked exactly the wrong time to lose his driver’s license. And Marisa Tormei, who is naked multiple times in this movie (for reasons both realistic and possibly gratuitous), but is only emotionally revealed in her final scene, where she goes for broke in trying to get a reaction out of her husband. And when she does exit, it goes from pathos to farce, and we’re reminded that it always looks easy to make a Big Exit, but is in fact hard to do without looking silly. Especially when you don’t have cab fare.

I cannot express adequately how this movie moved me in ways that No Country did not. Maybe it was because I wasn’t on a journey in the face of oblique evil, or traveling with a man who didn’t give a shit about anything. Maybe it was because, while these two men were born losers and went out losers, there was that sad poetry I was missing. All they wanted was a bit of money. A bunch of bodies later, they still need the money, but now they’re out of time. You know you’ve been watching a great movie when, near the end, a character has gun to his head, and he says “Go ahead, you’ll be doing me a favor.” The line is not original. What is original is that he means it, he’s right, and yet you still care about what happens to him. And then, man oh man, what happens next. You could have called this movie “Of Mice and Men,” and it’d be accurate. Certainly, it would be more interesting for those 7th graders.

RATING: * * * * * (out of 5 stars)

P.S. Fair warning- this movie starts with a naked Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Theres also a naked Marisa Tomei, but I figured you'd rather know about the Hoff first.

P.P.S. That Chevy Chase movie is "Dirty Work"