Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

In veteran director Sidney Lumet’s cool study of repugnance, two brothers (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke) undertake a minor criminal caper and wind up destroying their family—which was already pretty screwed up to begin with. Rosemary Harris and Albert Finney play the men’s parents, Marisa Tomei plays the woman they both sleep with, and Amy Grant plays Hawke’s one-note nagging ex. Everyone acts the hell out of every scene, hoping you’ll appreciate the regal fatalism of it all; yes, they’ll have you know this is a tragedy. But Lumet’s been obviated by all the TV cop procedurals and gritty urban melodramas for which his early career paved the way. He’s neither a moralist nor a satirist now, and in fact so workmanlike that you can’t really call him a stylist. Maybe that’s why he and first-time screenwriter Kelly Masterson adopt a trendily non-linear narrative approach. It only distracts: The best drama here is of people struggling at once to contain themselves and to slough off self-degrading circumstances.