Friday, April 11, 2008
Before the Devil Knows Your Dead
Sidney Lumet is a living legend. He has made some great films and my favorite will always be Prince of the City. Dog Day Afternoon is a close second. His latest film, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead is another soon to be classic. Lumet knows how to get a great performance out of every actor he works with. He was a theatre director and he brings that aspect to each and every film he directs. The film's plot has been done before but the way Lumet presents it brings something new to the concept. Two brothers try to rob their parents jewerly store, but are confronted with too many problems. Ethan Hawke gives a tour de force performance as Hank the nervous brother. This may be Ethan Hawke's best performance on screen. Philip Seymour Hoffman is incapable of giving a bad performance I believe. The plot is told from the seperate perspective of each character. It puts you in the mind set of these characters which also includes Charlie, (Albert Finney) their father. The film is set in New York, which Lumet loves to use and I personally love to see New York on film. The characters are so realistic that you feel their pain. This reminded me why I love films. It reminded me of the gritty films of the 70's which were character driven. And finally it reminded me why I hope to be a filmmaker someday. On April 15th make sure to see this film when it is released on DVD.
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5 comments:
I'm looking forward to seeing this film, I'm a big fan of Lumet too. Can't get enough of Dog Day Afternoon.
Attica! Attica! Remember Attica?
Dog Day Afternoon is one of the greatest films ever made. I just bought "Daniel" with Tim Hutton and I'm gonna watch this weekend, hopefully it is another good Sidney Lumet film. Its from 1983 I think. Have you seen that one?
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I somehow managed to delete my comment. I'm sooooo not a computer person.
I haven't seen Daniel, let me know if it's any good, will you being doing a write up?
The ultimate Lumet film for me has to be Network.
"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more"
Ultimately, I thought this was an incredibly weak movie, and not only because of the tinny sound and brief video failure at the Angelika. (They gave me a free voucher, which I used to see There Will Be Blood. Now that was an experience.)
Some background before I get into it - I am a huge Lumet fan. I was a permanent fixture at the monthlong Lumet retrospective at the Film Forum in February, even bringing a dozen of my friends and family to go listen to him speak there on my birthday. I have seen most (but not all) of his movies, my favorite being Fail-Safe, followed by 12 Angry Men, followed by The Pawnbroker. I know his style, and I know his incredibly unique skills.
This movie lacked all of the essential Lumet elements.
My first thought was that in addition to loving Lumet, I'm a huge fan of every member of that ensemble - Marisa Tomei, PSH, Albert Finney. I never thought I'd see these actors fail, but under the weight of a mercilessly bad script (the freshman attempt of the screenwriter, who - according to Wikipedia - tried to get the film produced for seven years before convincing Lumet) anyone would break.
Percolating slowly for the first 90 minutes, the film attempts Lumet's classic melodrama but lacks the oomph of it. I was thrilled by the trailer, but found the movie added nothing. Instead, it was filled with false swagger, false desperation, sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Perhaps the shift to digital ruined it a little bit for me. But I can't tell if I'm placing cart before horse. It felt cheap, half-baked, that's for sure, but I don't think that's because of the digital factor. I think it's because the movie was trying to tell what sounds like an incredibly interesting story -- but without providing any motivation, any backstory, any emotion to attach us to what we are seeing.
I should clarify those words. In 12 Angry Men, the twelve jurors remain anonymous throughout - an element intrinsic to the drama. That's highlighted at the end, when Fonda's character exchanges surnames with the old man before they part ways. The characters' backstories were fleshed out from a safe distance, but we were held at rapt attention. What's different here? The brothers need money. ("It was cloudy, Martha." "There are rays, Hank. / Do you know how much that crazy school is costing me?") Yet they seem, somehow, to have nothing at stake.
In the first scene at the androgynous drug dealer's pomo Central Park West apartment, we are confronted by the brash disjuncture of a Looney Tunes segment playing on a large flatscreen TV. This illustrates the entire movie, in my eyes. A farce, a grotesque cartoon. Characters playing incredible desperation and need -- but for no apparent reason. We understand they've gotten themselves into heaps of trouble, that's surely true. But Lumet doesn't shine without at least an approximation of a moral compass. Who do we latch onto here?
Fail-Safe and Pawnbroker cemented Lumet's famous editing, mathematically calculated frame-by-frame and set to very specific pace. But here, in trying something new, he finds himself sort of hackneyed for once. The interplay between pre-robbery and post-robbery is weak. The distance between Rio (the opening of the film) and the moment of the robbery is indeterminate - absolutely no sense of timing or rhythm. Simply put, we don't need a direct arc. But we do need to understand why we have fragmented editing. It's clear in Pawnbroker, which almost invented that style, and of course it's clear in Memento, from which the shuffled storytelling of this flick draws. But here, it just serves to add to the confusion. A cacophony of voices, coupled with an anxiety-inducing soundtrack (a Lumet rarity -- 12 Angry Men featured only eight minutes of music total, I believe), rips apart the story before it can be told.
Of course, the last scene is incredibly powerful - silent Lumet genius. No words, no couched emotions. Everything placed directly on the (flat)line. Like the ringing telephone that closes The Verdict, or the sweltering, urgent pauses of Dog Day Afternoon. In a real Lumet movie, you hold your breath the entire time. Here, you've spent almost the entire film running the basic story (outlined in the trailer) ragged, and by the time the movie finally picks up speed it's over -- at least with quite the last gasp.
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