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Partners
Before the Devil Knows You're DeadIn Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, veteran director Sidney Lumet's first feature film to get a UK release since 1999's Gloria (we didn't get his previous film, 2006's Find Me Guilty), the protagonists, brothers Andy (Hoffman) and Hank (Hawke), are selfish, self-pitying, self-serving idiots.
Hank is presented as uncertain, put-upon and bullied by his brother and their father, Charles (Finney), and the fact that he agrees to go along with Andy's plan makes him despicable. The very notion of brothers robbing their own parents' small business precludes them from either sympathy or empathy.
If the material were stronger or more nuanced, the film might have had a chance of working. As it is, the intense performances tip over into hammy, the melodrama feels cold and unreal, and the whole affair has a tiresome whiff of self-importance. It's certainly a long time since Dog Day Afternoon, when some other desperate, flawed robbers came across as deeply humane.
Andy and Hank are two men bordering on middle-age who are unhappy with modern life, getting into debt and desperate for a second chance. In Andy's case, he wants to live a life of luxury in Brazil and revitalise things with wife Gina (Tomei), while the nominally nicer Hank just wants to provide for his estranged daughter and get on top of his paternity payments to keep his ex, Martha (Ryan), off his back. Oh, and he wants to provide for Gina too - as they're having sex on the side.
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead is structured in fragments, so we start with the robbery itself, for which Hank has enlisted Bobby (O'Byrne), a petty criminal he's acquainted with. It's bungled terribly - not only does Bobby carry a real gun, against Andy's instructions to Hank, but the boys' mother, Nanette (Harris), is on duty in the shop when she wasn't scheduled to be. The film then flashes back to tell how both Andy and Hank prepared for the event, giving some insight into their fairly normal, and averagely rubbish, lives.
The multi-strand structure continues with the aftermath - from the perspectives of the brothers and of Charles. With the cops uninterested or unable to help out ("Doesn't anyone down there give a damn?" Charles asks on the phone as they give him the run-around), he pursues the case himself. Inevitably, nothing can end well and several lives are on course to getting totally ruined. Or ended.
All of which is presumably meant to add up to some sort of moral fable about desperation in a dog-eat-dog society. But in reality, it's a cynical, morally blunt yarn populated by straightforward scumbags, unfortunate victims and dodgy female roles, notably Tomei's Gina - a thankless character who has no real say for herself and spends much of her screen time half-naked - and Ryan's Martha, who's more plain old harridan than reasonably aggrieved ex-wife. Plenty of wasted talent involved here.
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