Before the Devil Knows You're Dead: Critic Reviews

Proof that Sidney Lumet's talent is, in every sense, timeless.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a chronicle of destruction -- physical, spiritual and moral.

In its relentless and uncompromising nastiness, cold-sweat tension and fear, its serious engagement with the idea of evil and sin and finally in the way it evolves, persuasively, into a kind of contemporary family tragedy, this is in a different league.

A sharply acted and highly entertaining morality play.

In addition to being a study in great acting, this is a study in great directing. Filming with high-definition digital video cameras, Lumet weaves in and out of the action, proving to be as adroit with new technology as he was with old-school celluloid.

There's no larger message other than that greed gives us something to hold on to even as it kills us.

Three years after being presented a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, the 83-year-old director comes forth with a violent family melodrama that is his strongest movie in at least two decades.

[Lumet] proves that at 83 he's still the master of the game.

Mr. Lumet has forgotten nothing, and still knows more than almost anyone about the elusive art of directing actors.

You feel Before the Devil Knows You're Dead more than you watch it. And the feeling is far from warm and fuzzy.

[Sidney Lumet's] touch in Before the Devil is so sure, so perfectly weighted, that it's hard to imagine him capable of making a bad movie.

[A] furious and entertaining little morality play.

Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is such a superb crime melodrama that I almost want to leave it at that. To just stop writing right now and advise you to go out and see it as soon as you can.

Lumet directs the script with the actor-centered efficiency that has served him well over a surprising array of projects.

This ambitious and well-directed crime thriller, with an intricate flashback structure redolent of Reservoir Dogs, gives Philip Seymour Hoffman a fascinatingly ambiguous character to work with.

Lumet's film is a stunner.

The family dynamics are skillfully rendered, the suspense is bruising and each man's performance is a revelation.

What a movie. What a director.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is often an uncomfortable film to sit through, but the rewards it offers make it well worth the effort.

The 83-year-old Mr. Lumet, who has handled such immortals as Brando and Magnani in his career, expertly extracts individually charismatic performances from Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Hawke, Mr. Finney, Ms. Harris and Ms. Tomei.

A botched-heist thriller with labyrinthine plot twists, suspenseful character revelations and out-of-sequence narrative elements befitting a grand opera mounted on a massive scale.

...the wrenching tale has something for anyone who likes their melodrama spiked with palpable tension and genuine suspense.

This flick is fast and ferocious, [Lumet's] sharpest and best since Prince of the City -- and surely one of the year's finest.

[Lumet's] best film since 1982's The Verdict.

At a time when family movies are usurped by fantasies of sentimental feelgood, Lumet's latest -- the mangled-heist melodrama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead -- delivers a swift kick straight to the jewels.