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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
2007 117 min United States of America, United Kingdom R 18+
★7.6
Crime, Drama, Thriller
Director: Sidney Lumet
Trailers
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Description
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.
Budget:
$18M
US Gross:
$7.08M
Worldwide:
$25.01M
Starring
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Actor
Ethan Hawke
Actor
Albert Finney
Actor
Awards
17 wins & 28 nominations total
Key opinion
Sidney Lumet's final film is widely recognized as a powerful, gritty character study, anchored by exceptional performances from its lead cast. While opinions on the narrative pacing and the film's bleak tone vary, it is generally praised for its psychological depth and uncompromising look at family dysfunction and moral decay.
| Acting | Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, and Albert Finney deliver uniformly strong and psychologically nuanced performances that anchor the film. | |
| Theme | The film is a searing, unoptimistic exploration of moral rot, greed, and the destructive fallout of family secrets. | |
| Screenplay | The non-linear, fragmented narrative structure effectively builds tension by centering on the emotional consequences of the heist rather than the crime itself. | |
| Emotion | The film's tone is polarizing: some appreciate its raw, gritty, and unflinching aesthetic, while others find the characters irredeemable and the atmosphere repulsively bleak. | |
| Pacing | The pacing is divisive, with some viewers finding it tightly plotted and others perceiving it as overly slow, tedious, or stretched out. |