Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (8/10)
posted in Movie Reviews |
While I don’t consider this anywhere near the classic that many critics seem to, it’s still a pretty good movie. Production is a bit weak, but the fantastic cast more than makes up for it.
Writing: Newcomer Kelly Masterson’s script is interesting as a character piece. Though if I were a producer/director on the film, I would have trimmed some material out of it that just seemed unnecessary, like the opening scene. Even if I kept the opening scene, I would surely have shot it differently.
Production: This movie feels shockingly amateur in nature. To think that Sidney Lumet, an 83-year-old vet of a great many films, directed this movie is a bit of a surprise. His previous movie, the superior Find Me Guilty, was much more clearly the work of a seasoned veteran. This movie looks like it was a guerrilla-shot production. Then there’s the loose editing which I don’t think quite works right.
Cast: To make up for all the previously mentioned shortcomings, in swoops the first rate cast. Philip Seymour Hoffman manages to make his bad-news character work quite well. Better than it should, frankly. Ethan Hawke does a very nice job with the naive and unsuspecting brother role. His character and performance reminded me a bit of Jared Leto in Lord Of War (also a superior film - and one with Ethan Hawke in a VERY different kind of role). Marisa Tomei comes through with a surprisingly frank performance, and is saddled with the weakest written character to boot. Still, she pulls it off well enough. To round things off, you’ve got Albert Finney, who’s incapable of a bad performance.
Music: The score by Carter Burwell is pretty low key, though the trained film score fan ear can easily pick out some of the cues as being “Carter Burwell cues.” Hardly a best score of the year, but it holds thing together as well as it probably could. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me if a different composer could have helped make up for some of the shortcomings (if Jerry Goldsmith were still around, I’d be very curious to hear what he’d have come up with).
