Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007): B+

Director(s): Sidney Lumet. Screenplay: Kelly Masterson. Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei, Rosemary Harris and Aleksa Palladino. Distributor: THINKFilm. Runtime: 117 min. Rating: R.

"May you be in heaven half an hour... before the devil knows you're dead," reads the opening title of Sidney Lumet's new film, named after the latter part of this irish toast. It refers to the brutish case of two brothers, Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke), who have planned to rob their sympathetic parents' jewelery store—and while I won't go as far as to reveal Before the Devil Knows You're Dead's ending, what happens after is a catastrophe, as it seems. In crafting a successful caper picture, Lumet, whose Dog Day Afternoon ranks high on one of the best New York films ever made, has done it: whether via the fraught narrative—jumping back in forth among the characters and time, ultimately adding a unique feel for the film—or brutal control of tone and atmospherics, this is a hard-boiled film. Yet masqueraded by its bestial surface, there is a certain and ambiguous message throughout: that of family. This moral tie at first is not as illustrated, but as the brothers' family joins the matter as it crescendos in irreversibility, it becomes furthermore lucid: what the hell is wrong with these people? As usual, Lumet's tight, bleak direction helps elevate what could have been an archetypal rip off to superlative level. Along with Phillip Seymour Hoffman's and Ethan Hawke's excellent acting, this is a film of startling brutality and methodicalness, told with the feeling of total conviction and some sort of incredibility.