dir: Sidney Lumet
2007
The title might be a bit confusing to people who haven=92t heard the
whole phrase before. It refers to having the temporary good fortune to
get to heaven a while before the Devil, who=92s keen to get His due,
knows you=92re dead. In other words, getting a few minutes grace before
the hammer, or, in this case, the pitchfork, comes down on you.
As you wandered into the cinema, wondering what the title was
referring to, you sat there oblivious, munching on your highly
unhealthy popcorn, chipping into your choc-top, which drips shards of
chocolate onto your already dirty clothing that take a while to melt
into the fabric real good. After enduring the trailers and idiotic
commercials for mobile phones, 4WD trips to South Australia and
switching your mobile phone off before the film starts, you=92d be
greeted with a sight that will push the question regarding the title
out of your empty little head.
The first entire minute of this film concerns itself solely with
Philip Seymour Hoffman drilling Marisa Tomei in the doggie style
position and watching himself in a mirror as he does it. You can like
or admire Hoffman=92s acting abilities and performances, but I=92ll bet
your firstborn that you never really ever wanted to see him pretending
to fuck anyone, let alone watch that chubby arse wobbling back and
forth.
Actually, now that I think about it, the film should have been called
Philip Seymour Hoffman Drilling Marisa Tomei Doggie Style Whilst
Watching Himself in the Mirror.
Look, I=92m not denying that the scene is important. It=92s very
important. It establishes very early and very clearly that Hoffman=92s
character in this flick is something of a narcissistic prick. And
Marisa Tomei looks sensational in that and probably lots of other
positions. Good luck to her. It=92s just that, now, Hoffman=92s arse
haunts my nightmares.
Yeah, okay, I=92ll get on with it. Two doofus brothers, Andy (Hoffman)
and Hank (Ethan Hawke) need money. They=92re not crims by trade, but end
up planning and carrying out a robbery on a jewellery store owned by
their own parents. It=92s the perfect crime in the planning stage, where
no-one=92s meant to get hurt and everyone walks away happy.
In the implementation phase, of course, it turns into what is
generally known in the business as a clusterfuck.
All this happens in the first ten minutes of the film. The plot then
spends the rest of the flick jumping backwards and forwards in time
from the robbery examining everything that happened to the awful
aftermath. See, the plot of the flick isn=92t that new or novel in any
way. But the story is where the fascination lies.
This is where the title=92s point kicks in, in that after the robbery
goes wrong, Hank and Andy desperately scramble around in order to
delay the inevitable. But these guys aren=92t professional crims, and
the likelihood of their getting away with anything is nil. They are
both fuck-ups of extraordinary magnitude, but not for lack of
intelligence. Mostly, it comes from the deep character flaws both seem
privy to.
Hank is the kind of guy who has the ex-wife constantly screaming at
him for child support, and whose daughter calls him a loser because he
can=92t give her $150 so she can see the Lion King musical with her
friends. His solution? Getting shit-faced, fall-down drunk and
probably spending over $150 on booze. Everything he does seems to
occur in a sweaty, nervous cloud of weak-willed desperation, even when
it=92s basic stuff like returning a hire car or answering a phone call.
His ex-wife=92s (Amy Ryan, almost playing the same character she played
in Gone Baby Gone), entire dialogue seems to consist of little more
than =93Fuck you, loser, pay me=94, which made me think that maybe she was
channelling Henry Hill from Goodfellas.
Andy is the far more complicated and far nastier fuck-up. Although he
gives the outward appearance of success, he is a seething mass of
problems. From what I could gather, he is a cocaine addict, a heroin
addict, impotent and an embezzler from the firm he works for. Despite
what the opening scene showed, he is generally uninterested in his
wife and only dreams of finding someway to escape from his life and to
fly to Brazil.
In his weekly visits to a kimono wearing girlish drug dealer (Blaine
Horton), Andy pays for a hit and has the curious little androgyne
shoot him up. As he lays there in his underwear, Andy whilst being =93on
the nod=94, speaks of the virtues of real estate accounting, and how
everything balances out, everything makes sense because everything
adds up. But, he tells the dealer who couldn=92t care less, he himself
doesn=92t add up. He laments that the parts of his personality and the
persona he tries to project to the world don=92t connect together.
Later on, after a funeral, Andy gets into a strange argument with his
father (Albert Finney), where he expresses resentment over the manner
in which he felt excluded from the tightly knit unit formed by Hank,
their sister and the parents. He expresses it in such a way that makes
you think that maybe taking such an awful course of action as carrying
out a robbery at your parent=92s store isn=92t as out of character for a
man like Andy as we previously thought.
It takes certain personalities to make the unthinkable thinkable. The
virtue of this flick is that the story has desperate civilians trying
to operate as criminals but completely lacking the skills to make it
work or the foresight to see what the likely repercussions of their
actions would be, which necessitates that the level of tragedy has to
reach Shakespearean proportions before the devil gets what=92s owed.
I=92m sure the acting was probably great, but it=92s hard for me to notice
when such hams are porking up the screen. I thought all the acting was
as good as something like this deserves, probably too good for the
genre material, and what I really appreciated on the part of the
director was the abundance of long takes and extended, tense scenes
which really allows these hams the time they need to deliver the bacon
that=92s promised.
In an argument with someone about this film over the weekend, her
complaint was that the flick was a clich=E9d mess she=92s seen a thousand
times before. I really wonder now as I wondered then what movies she=92s
talking about. While there=92s nothing new about the plot (petty crime,
family conflict, revenge, trying to cover up one=92s crimes and making
everything worse), it=92s hardly a film I can say I=92ve seen plenty of
times before. And I=92ve watched a lot of films, crime-related and
otherwise.
My main problem with it wasn=92t the chronologically-fractured
narrative, but I didn=92t really give a damn about a single character in
the film. That=92s not a fatal flaw, but it makes it somewhat more of an
academic exercise than an emotional rollercoaster. I=92m watching to see
how much worse circumstances can get for the characters, rather than
sitting there with my heart in my mouth wondering whether the
characters I care about will survive, or whether they will damn
themselves further.
It=92s an interesting flick. Definitely interesting. Not great. But
interesting.
7 times I wonder whether Marisa Tomei wonders whether she got paid
just for that opening scene of drilling out of 10, because it=92s the
most worthwhile thing she supplies here.
--
=93You=92re not going to shoot me, are you?=94
=93It would make things easier. A lot easier.=94 =96 Before the Devil
Knows
You=92re Dead
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