Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
I guess my only worry about this movie is that it’s gonna tread on the heels of the slightly better The Lookout come Oscar time (that is to say, eek, next month – time flies …). It has a very similar feel to it, that’s for sure, but it’s great in completely different ways.
Without doubt, Philip Seymour-Hoffmann deserves an Oscar nomination. Like the guys in Rescue Dawn, I was intrigued at the start after all I’d read as to how relatively typical his work is; but by the end, you’ve witnessed an explosion, an actor genuinely pushing themselves to scary places. I also found the movie similar to Fargo, though I don’t know if that’s just the similar (though no less transfixing) Carter Burwell score talking.
With Sidney Lumet at the helm (just how many things are there here to get excited about?) I found myself trying to remember Family Business, too. Though you couldn’t ask for a better triple act than Albert Finney, Ethan Hawke, and Hoffmann (not to mention Rose Harris as the mom of the family) – and Hoffmann is completely believable as Finney’s son – I couldn’t help thinking that the feeling of the characters being family there came over better (of course, Broderick as Connery’s grandson, now I think about it, is even harder to swallow, lol).
It’s a movie that I’ll come back to though, for sure. The opening is brilliant thanks to Lumet, the ending electrifying thanks to Hoffmann; the middle took some adjusting to, I let my attention slide and got momentarily lost, but I’m sure it’ll grow on me. I haven’t seen Find Me Guilty though I want to despite my obvious concerns about Vin Diesel doing serious … in fact, looking at his filmography, the last Lumet movie I saw was Night Falls on Manhattan which I don’t remember … which really kind of makes this movie less like a “return to form” than some kind of miracle. I get excited about Sidney Lumet still making movies because the guy made Dog Day Afternoon, Network and Serpico, and his book “Making Movies” plain makes you love the guy and want him to make movies like this all the time. I hope he’s got more of the same in him still.