Sydney Lumet was one of those directors whose films are all total crap. This is one of them.It starts off with a sex scene featuring a good, long look at Philip Seymour Hoffman's naked big, fat ass. And it only gets worse....Younger brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) was supposed to rob his own parents' jewelry store-at the urging of older brother Andy (Hoffman)-but hires a friend to do it instead, so the brothers' mom gets killed. As the English say, not bloody likely!The second half of the film turns into a family melodrama with a lot recriminations and crying, mostly from older brother Andy.The film ends with a Quentin Tarantino-style bloody shootout in which about a dozen people get killed. Then the father/widower (Albert Finney) suffocates son Andy with a pillow.The film tries to compare/contrast the world of the working class v. the world of the upper middle class, but the whole storyline comes off as labored, contrived and convoluted. The film's only redeeming quality is that we get a good, long look at Marisa Tomei's T&A (she plays Andy's wife). Fortunately, THAT scene occurs in the first one-third of the film. So if you want, you can fast forward to that part, watch it, and then pop the DVD out. I wish I had.

'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead' - This mesmerizing crime melodrama couldn't get any more perfect. This is so much more than just a crime drama. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Eathan Hawke, already enough reason to watch a movie. Sidney lumet's long career fills towards completion with this movie. Playing with the timelines of the storytelling makes it different than usual movie. I recommend this movie to all crime drama lovers.

When you have a director with a fine back catalogue, some decent actors and decent budget you reckon you'll get something good. Doesn't always happen that way. This is a clunking pile of how not to make a movie. None of the characters are in any way credible; the plot line never holds up as there is no believable backstory. Why are they so messed up? Why is one derange by stress and the other driven to drugs and fraud? Why the hell would Andy's two dimensional wife have an affair with the mental brother? The storyline is so predictable even the Simpson's wouldn't bother parodying it. Sometimes a movie is so bad its laughable, but this just a waste of talent.

I was reading a review of another film recently that referred to this film and decided to give the IMDb page a look. I was surprised to see it got such high reviews. I'm no sloucher when it comes to appreciating obtuse, crafted films so I don't think I'm being hard on it here.This is a film about a robbery gone wrong, the messed up lives of the people involved, and the miserable aftermath. We've seen this type of film a hundred times before and I didn't see anything new. OK, I saw Marisa Tomei in a nude cameo but that was it (and she's getting old so that kind of ruined it for me after seeing her at her best in My Cousin Vinny). Of COURSE criminals are sad mess ups. I can tune to COPS to see losers get busted without their shirt on. I may have missed something, but the characters were one dimensional: The weak brother, the successful psycho brother, the uncaring working class father, and the pretty, aging girlfriend. Great. Held my interest for about 10 seconds.This film reminds me of Sideways which was far better at developing depth for their stereotypical characters: The pretty boy on a fling, the likable loser, the aspiring divorcée, the struggling single mother. Those characters had depth and you remembered them long after the film ended and they were mostly character actors. This film had big names and I knew what would happen about 5 minutes in. In case you don't, don't worry, they'll throw you the same obvious hints about 3 times in flashbacks.Doing a gangster film takes skill, creativity, and daring because the genre has been so well covered. Tarantino did this masterfully by portraying criminals as something they rarely are: thoughtful, tasteful, and articulate (most are losers which is why they are criminals.) This gangster film failed (for me) perhaps because it featured seemingly actual criminals who, apart from a few seconds getting shoved into a police car without a shirt on, are not that interesting.