Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) is about two brothers robbing their own family's jewellery shop. Andy works at an accountancy firm; he has been taking money and an audit is coming. He is also using. His brother Hank cannot make his maintenance payments and cannot find the money for his daughter's school trip. Andy proposes a plan: their father's small suburban jewellers. It is insured, there are no weapons, one elderly woman works the morning shift, and nobody will be hurt. Hank will not pull a trigger, only walk in. Hank is frightened and sends someone he knows. It is the day their mother is in the shop. The film is told out of order and shows the same morning repeatedly through different people. Each repetition adds information and whose fault it was keeps shifting. Sidney Lumet made it at eighty three and it was his last film. His career had begun with Twelve Angry Men. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play the brothers and Albert Finney the father. The real subject is not the robbery but the family. The father never loved one of his sons and never hid it, and the real cause of the event is there. It was shot digitally; Lumet was arguing for digital at the time. The final section is harsh and nobody comes out of it. It runs 117 minutes. Good for: crime drama, family tragedy, and performance. Less good for: nobody is sympathetic and the ending is merciless.