‎Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) directed by Sidney Lumet • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

2007 Directed by Sidney Lumet

No one was supposed to get hurt.

When two brothers organize the robbery of their parents' jewelry store, the job goes horribly wrong, triggering a series of events that send them and their family hurtling towards a shattering climax.

Philip Seymour Hoffman Ethan Hawke Albert Finney Marisa Tomei Aleksa Palladino Michael Shannon Amy Ryan Sarah Livingston Brían F. O'Byrne Rosemary Harris Blaine Horton Arija Bareikis Leonardo Cimino Lee Wilkof Damon Gupton Myra Lucretia Taylor Marcia Jean Kurtz

117 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by DirkH ★★★★½ 17

Whenever people make lists with favourite or best directors, Sidney Lumet hardly ever pops up. That should change. Look at his filmography. He is one of the best directors that ever worked in the industry.

This film is modern noir at its finest. It is bleak, rather disturbing and dark as hell. The story, which unravels in an asynchronous chronology, is multilayered and keeps you guessing due to its fragmented narrative. Only a very talented director can add the much needed coherence a story like this needs.

What Lumet understands very well is to give his actors the right amount of space to inhabit their characters. There is not one weak performance here. The main cast is superb, moved along…
Review by PTAbro ★★★½ 8

Dear god, what a dismal tale. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is an exercise in taking an instance of 'it can't get any worse, can it?' and making it much, much worse in the very next scene. I certainly don't mean in the quality of the film, which is superb, but in the depths of misfortune one family can sink to. This is tragedy of such magnitude that The Bard himself would be proud, compounded by the fact that all the misfortune is due to greed and ineptitude. Sidney Lumet's swan song deserves a place in the pantheon of 'bleakest films ever,' which makes this familial train wreck all the more morbidly fascinating.

Not a single role here is…
Review by Joe Bender ★★★★½ 6

After losing one of the best actors of our generation today, Philip Seymour Hoffman, I wanted to check more of his films. He left behind an amazing body of work and I've only seen maybe half of it. I started with Sidney Lumet's dark and brilliant noir Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

The script here is so damn good. Keeping you invested in characters that are very unlikable. The cast is terrific, with Hoffman and Ethan Hawke both giving great performances. Albert Finney was probably the standout to me however. Not only is this yet another great performance from Hoffman, but it's one of 2007's most underrated films and a great film for Lumet to have ended his career with.
Review by Simone ★★★★★ 2

Even though I saw this years ago, I was still completely surprised by everything that happened during this recent re-watch. All I remember from the last time I saw it was that I liked it. This time, I fell head over heels in love. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is essentially a family drama masquerading as a crime drama. Andy and Hank are brothers in very different stages in their lives. When Andy asks Hank to rob a jewelry store, everything goes wrong and the rest of the film is concerned with how their lives fall apart and how fucked up their family is.

This is definitely Phillip Seymour Hoffman's best performance, and that's a big deal. He always…
Review by AJ Black ★★★★½ 6

It's quite astounding to realise Sidney Lumet filmed Before the Devil Knows Your Dead when he was over eighty years old, after five decades as a critically acclaimed director responsible for many genuine Hollywood classics, because though it's often quite masterfully put together it's also filled with the energy & skill of a man five decades his junior - and frankly many directors in their thirties don't make films this good. Sadly it was also Lumet's last film before his death a few years later, but what an epilogue to a triumphant career; this is by turns a carefully lensed, cleverly written, well edited and superbly acted drama ostensibly about a heist gone wrong but primarily about a deeply dysfunctional American…
Review by Steve G ★★★★½ 2

The truly great directors don't fade away. They keep kicking and screaming and proving people wrong to the very end.

Alfred Hitchcock went back to London and enjoyed the post-Hays Code freedom of being able to make the sleaziest thriller he ever made before turning his hand to a deft black comedy. Stanley Kubrick stuck two fingers up at pop culture and those many who said you couldn't make a serious film with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in it, and proceeded to make one of the greatest films of his career. If not the greatest.

Sidney Lumet, at the age of 83, saw Before The Devil Knows You're Dead released after a string of worthy but under-appreciated films went…

Recent reviews

Review by Steven Espinoza ★★★★½

Pulp fiction executed by masters of cinema. Hawke, Hoffman, Finney, Tomei, Shannon (in a tiny, but still scenery chewing role) and Lumet - all operating at level 100. The story’s non-linear structure makes it fly by in no time. There’s no fat on this film. Every scene is immaculately constructed with complications at every turn. The whole thing moves with incredible urgency and has emotional heft to it. The end leaves some loose ends unresolved and left to the viewer to figure out, which does hamper the finale a smidge. Aside from that, it’s a powerhouse film with powerhouse performances and a dynamite script.

8.9/10
Review by Pranay Roy ★★★★

I went in to see two of my favorite actors square of onscreen and what I got was an intense, tightly woven and expertly staged film about a fucked up family made up of fucked up individuals in the midst of the most fucked up time possible. As you start thinking that it can't get any worse than this, it does. Sidney Lumet has made one of the great last films of any director.

What joy it is to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman at work. Gone too soon.

Highly Recommended.
Review by LucasFlint ★★★★

Bleakest flick I’ve seen since A Simple Plan, and while it isn’t quite that great, it’s still immensely enthralling.

Hawke, Finney, Tomei, and Hoffmann are all perfectly cast. But the real standout here is Mike Shannon, who steals both of his two scenes as well as the whole movie. I’ve yet to see one of his performances be anything less than perfect.
Review by Wilson Carter ★★★★

The Alphabet Club
B

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watch a film directed by Sidney Lumet

A entertaining and well acted thriller. 78.50/100
Review by Emmy Potter ★★★½

And you thought YOUR family was fucked up. Two brothers decide to rob their own parents' jewelry store in Westchester and things disintegrate from there - except they've clearly been disintegrating well before these two desperate schemers ever hatched their cockamamie plan. Hawke's understated intensity is a nice contrast to Hoffman's more explosive energy, but Hoffman eclipses pretty much everyone in the film (save for Albert Finney) regardless of whether he's onscreen or not. The time-jumps are far less confusing than Momento and build tension nicely, but the characters all have so much going on, a linear story would probably have worked just fine. The women here do not have much to do besides be subjected to violence, show their…
Review by REMA ★★★½

Like A Simple Plan as written by Eugene O'Neill.

I have a like/loathe appreciation of Philip Seymour Hoffman (PSH). I acknowledge his power to permeate every part of a film. His characters own the landscape, even when they are not present in the scene. And I also always feel every character's creepy underbelly, like they do disgusting things in the dark - outside the purview of the plot.

Hoffman's force-of-nature power as an actor and a screen presence overshadows the rest of cast, except possibly Marisa Tomei; mostly because she is a goddess of eternal beauty. Tomei turns in a solid performance but her multiple topless scenes, in which she is completely comfortable and a thing of beauty helps balance the ugliness (both physical and spiritual) of Hoffman's character.

So beware, this is not heist movie. It's the devolution of a man too full to hold it in anymore.

This would be a good match with Network (1976).
Review by G ★★★½

"The world is an evil place, Charlie. Some of us make money off of that, and others get destroyed."

Everything goes from bad to worse here. Well put together though, as one might expect from a Sidney Lumet film.

3.7/5
Review by Bianca Reimonenq ★★★★

Man I miss Sidney Lumet. The style of this movie never revealed his age, it’s as sharp as he was. Philip Seymour Hoffman is also on top in this movie, he and Albert Finney are absolute power houses. I also wouldn’t be mad if Albert Finney had his own Taken movie because he was an intimidating man on a mission and nothing was gonna stop him. Ethan Hawke plays the spineless brother but he really has depth to his character rather than a one note dumb, scared younger brother type. I don’t like that they say faggot three times and I know Marisa Tomei is beautiful but stop making her a whore. Other than that love this movie and RIP Sidney Lumet. Also Michael Shannon randomly showing up in movies is always a pleasant surprise.
Review by Matt Harms ★★★★

I feel like I've seen this pop up on Netflix for the last 5 years or so, but I never started it because of the cheesy looking title design. Never bothered to see who directed it. What a mistake. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke give two astounding performances. So does nearly every other member of the cast.