Before the Devil Knows You're Dead [Blu-ray] | ![Before the Devil Knows You're Dead [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2BII5fewBL._SL500_.jpg)
| Director: Sidney Lumet
Actors: Rosemary Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney
Studio: Image Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: $35.98
Buy New: $10.10
You Save: $25.88 (72%)
New (36) Used (16) from $9.99
Rating:  126 reviews
Sales Rank: 10643
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Ntsc, Widescreen
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Blu-ray
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 117 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 5.3 x 0.4
MPN: 91258
UPC: 014381491258
EAN: 0014381491258
ASIN: B00112S8S2
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Release Date: April 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is an exceptionally dark story about a crime gone wrong and the complicated reasons behind it. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are outstanding as brothers whose mutual love-hate relationship subtly colors their agreement to rob their own parents' jewelry store, and more explicitly affects the anxious aftermath of their villainy when their mother (Rosemary Harris) ends up shot. Hoffman's steely, emotionally locked-up Andy, despite pulling down six figures as a corporate executive, is supporting an expensive drug habit while trying to leave the country with his depressed wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). Hank (Hawke), a whipped dog of low intelligence, owes back alimony and child support to his ex-spouse. Both men need money and agree to rip off their parents' business, a decision that goes awry and puts both men in various kinds of jeopardy while their mother remains comatose and their father (Albert Finney) lurches along trying to make sense of anything. Writer Kelly Masterson's screenplay employs a perhaps now-overly-familiar time-shifting tactic, jumping around the chronology of the story's events and replaying scenes from different vantage points. The effect is a little tedious but successfully deconstructs the film's drama in a way that shows how such terrible events are directly linked to family dysfunction, old wounds between parent and child, between siblings, that fester into full-blown tragedy. Eighty-three-year-old director Lumet (Serpico) employs bleached colors and scenes of blunt sexuality and violence, adding to the moral rudderlessness and banality of this airless world. If Devil feels a little reductive and insistently grim, it is also a generally persuasive work by an old master. --Tom Keogh
Product Description
Bluray Disc
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 121 more reviews...
 Watch this Instead of Cassandra's Dream July 3, 2009
Richard G. Hine (amazon.com/dp/B001UG3BJK)
What happens when two veteran directors make two similarly themed movies, each focusing on two brothers planning the perfect crime? Predictably, in each case, it all goes horribly wrong. However, only in Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows Your Dead," is that a good thing. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke (along with Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei) make Lumet's botched robbery caper consistently intriguing and suspenseful. In the case of Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream," the brothers-in-crime story is botched in every way imaginable -- with a disastrous script and wooden performances by Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell. The plots and the packaging are similar. But one you will remember. The other you'll want to forget.
 A greek tragedy June 16, 2009
Morten Lokkegaard (Sao Paulo Brazil)
This movie is one of the darkest tales I have ever seen - now you are warned. Its story unfolds much like one of the Shakespearean (or Greek) tragedies and it does not offer much conselation in its darkness.
Only exception is the acting with is superb and carries the movie as does the (exagerated) issues it highlights in the relations between parents and child and importantly parents and multiple children in as much as how the 2-3 children are often treated very differently more or less entirely due to the order in which they were born.
It is definetely a watchable movie and wont be a waste of your time but it is not exactly a must see either and hardly the most uplifting of its kind.
 Melodrama. Hmm . . . June 16, 2009
J. Onorato (Hobart, IN USA)
A co-worker recommmended this movie to me, telling me that it was a drama that nearly bordered on horror. As a huge fan of horror, I was curious. Adversely, I'm not a drama fan. In my collection of movies, I own only 3 dramas, including this one.
After viewing Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, I was ready to tear into it. It is far too ridiculous to be considered drama, or even thriller. I was thinking it was much closer to melodrama.
But lo and behold, after reading the first handful of Amazon reviews, I've discovered that the director WANTED this to be melodrama. So on that level alone, this movie is a complete success. I didn't even know melodrama was a genre.
As such, the movie is extremely enjoyable, even to someone like me with the horror background. In fact, this movie is to drama what Ichi the Killer is to Horror. WAY OVER THE TOP.
Make a list of all the possible dramatic scenarios, such as the crumbling marriage, the dysfunctional father / son relationship, the embezzling from work scenario, the sibling rivalry, the infidelity story, the drug addict plotline, and on and on . . .
This movie has all of them. ALL OF THEM.
Ridiculous. And yet vastly entertaining.
I mean, the story begins with the husband character trying to hold his marriage together- he needs money to start a new life with his wife-
and by the middle of the third act, she's divorcing him and he doesn't even care. In fact he's giving her cab money to leave him. He's in such disastrous situation that the marriage has become his least pressing dilemma.
Again, it's ridiculous. Still, I'm compelled to recommend it.
My #1 movie of the year! June 9, 2009
Alan Starr (Lawrence, MA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
First off, any movie that has Marisa Tomei naked in three different scenes automatically gets four stars. However, this movie is even better than that! It's incredible that the guy who made movies like '12 Angry Men', 'Serpico', 'Dog Day Afternoon', 'Network' and 'The Verdict', can actually come out with one of his best at age 83. This is a great crime drama about a heist where everything goes wrong. But it's not really a heist movie, that's just the outline for the in-depth character studies. Philip Seymour Hoffman is his usual amazing self, Ethan Hawke matches him as his brother; Marisa Tomei is hotter than ever (did I mention that she gets naked? three times?), and does a good job playing Hoffman's depressive wife. Albert Finney is Oscar-worthy as their father, and there's even a small role for Amy Ryan, who shined in the movie I watched the previous evening, 'Gone Baby Gone'. One of Sidney Lumet's best movies, and that's really saying something.
Well that was a cheery one May 17, 2009
Richard Ross
What a dark and depressing film Sidney Lumet has created. Technically everything works from the script, the acting, the directing, and so forth but I still wasn't impressed. What annoyed me the most was the 'Reservoir Dogs' style of jumping back and forth from the robbery, the preparations before the robbery, the aftermath of the robbery. The film is already long at two hours and this abrupt back and forth made it feel longer. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play the Hanson brothers: Andy and Hank. Andy (Hoffman) is married to an insecure trophy wife (the nude Marisa Tomei) and their sex life is only happening when they are vacationing in Rio. He wants enough money to move there permanently so that him and his wife can enjoy each other to the fullest. He hates his job in the corporate world and is in danger of being found out by IRS auditors since he has been stealing money to support his drug habit. Hank (Hawke) is a loving father who can't find the money to pay his alimony and child support. His ex wife has no sympathy for him and belittles him in front of their daughter. Both men are desperate for a quick fix and Andy comes up with just the solution. They will knock over a "mom and pop" jewelry store and split the six grand profit. He assures Hank that it is a "victimless" crime since the shop owners will collect the insurance. The only hitch is that the mom and pop he's referring to are their own parents. Beginning with a dark premise like two brothers robbing their parents' store things can only get darker from here and they do. Murder, double cross, blackmail, drugs, infidelity, revenge, I don't think Lumet leaves anything out. Hoffman is good as the older brother who resents having to carry his younger brother all these years and who is pissed off at the old man for not loving him as much as his other siblings. Hawke is extremely touching as a devoted father who is desperate to buy his daughter the things that will make her happy. Tomei's character isn't really fleshed out (poor pun I know) and is reduced to a vulnerable woman caught between two brothers. Finney is heartbreaking as the father who has to admit his shortcomings to his grown sons and struggle to find some answers in light of the senseless tragedy that befalls him and his wife. The only light moments come from the awesome Michael Shannon as a blackmailer who has the film's greatest line "Now listen Chico. Do you mind if I call you Chico?". I don't know if I'd call it another Lumet masterpiece but even in his eighties he shows that he's still got what it takes.
|
|
|
