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Watching this impeccably crafted melodrama you feel grateful for
Watching this impeccably crafted melodrama, you feel grateful for a veteran filmmaker who serves a gripping story with a confident efficiency thats lean, mean and focused like a laser. Lumet doesn’t damn himself, but it’s hardly cinema heaven. Hoffman, Hawke and Finney claw strong moments out of an underwhelming script, but for some the only thing that’ll stick is Marisa Tomei with her kit off. Buy Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead blu-ray As deliberately provocative and in-your-face ugly as this film is, it still plays as second-rate Tarantino instead of first-rate Lumet. Nothing in Lumets filmography has contained the back alley, concrete-block pummeling of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, a masterful, rampaging descent into the quicksand hell of desperation. a dark, dour, depressing dirge. Its powerfully crafted, intensely paced and brilliantly acted from all involved players, and a film thats easily Lumets best since Network.
