Philip Seymour Hoffman is having sex with Marisa Tomei. He’s taking her from behind. This is the opening to Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, and depending on your proclivities, it’s either embarrassing, arousing, or something between the two.
Whatever your reaction, it’s certainly a provocative way for Lumet to grab the attention. And while this scene of passion offers a short-lived moment of tenderness in a film dominated by trauma, it also hints at the stark delivery of the drama that is about to unfold.
It begins with sex, but it kicks off with a robbery. It should be simple, but it’s not: it’s awkward, disturbing and thoroughly messy – a farce that collapses into a horror show of blood and broken glass. But this is just the first in series of woeful events that will blight the lives of brothers Andy and Hank (Hoffman and Ethan Hawke) along with their truculent father, Charles (Albert Finney).
Andy, the elder of the siblings, is a junkie and a fraudster. As the brains behind the bad idea (“Hey, let’s rob the family store!”), he bears the brunt of our condemnation. As time wears on, Andy reveals himself to be even more of a monstrous parasite than first imagined – a superlative turn from Hoffman can render him human, but never likeable.
Hank, on the other hand, is pathetic. A drunken failure taunted by his ex-wife, his participation in the carnival of cock-ups is propelled by despair rather than greed. While he’s hardly hero material, Hawke’s hangdog demeanour is sad enough to garner something approaching sympathy, in a decent performance from an actor who doesn’t always shine.
Lumet’s relatively low-key direction allows them both to make the most of their roles, as vicious bickering drives the plot forward. Not since Fargo has a film so effectively portrayed a crime snowballing out of control, and while the brothers’ descent eventually teeters on the edge of credibility, there’s a vital beacon of truth that somehow cuts through the melodrama. Sidney Lumet knows human nature, and it shows.
Okay, so this is bleak stuff. Yet there’s something oddly satisfying about the lives of others going down the toilet, and when the toilet is this well-made it’s hard to complain. There aren’t many chuckles, but this is high-calibre tragedy from a veteran of the art.
