Toronto and NYFF preview. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

"The best surprise here is a splendid comeback from 83-year-old Sidney Lumet, which will be even more surprising if you've seen anything he's made in the past decade," writes the Telegraph's Tim Robey. "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is raggedly brilliant, sensationally acted, and Lumet's most vital work in 20 years or more."

Updated through 9/26.

"Both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are in fine form as brothers who attempt to knock off a mom-and-pop jewelry store that happens to be owned by their actual mom and pop," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "And also: Michael Shannon, last seen as the mentally disturbed stranger in Bug, has quickly risen to my shortlist of favorite character actors. Definitely someone to watch." Adds AV Club colleague Noel Murray: "[W]e don't watch crime stories to see the plot points fall into line, we watch them to see how people behave when they're misbehaving, and it's here that Before the Devil excels."

"Lumet shuttles back and forth in time, juggling narrative blocks in order to examine and re-examine each situation from various points of view," notes Karina Longworth. "The gimmick becomes somewhat tiresome as the film wears on. Paradoxically, though the repetition does offer Lumet and his actors the opportunity to really take each character apart, the chronological shuttling works as a distancing device, forever preventing any real audience engagement with the people on screen. Hoffman's performance could best be described as bloated (and not in a totally negative way), but Hawke, [Marisa] Tomei and Albert Finney are doing some really fascinating, nuanced work, and it's all just slightly diluted by Lumet's formal agitations." Also at the SpoutBlog, a clips of Lumet talking about "the rise of HD, why he thinks 'naturalistic photography' is an oxymoron, and anecdotes on the how the drawbacks of celluloid stifled both Dog Day Afternoon and John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy."

"Sidney Lumet's 45th film is a classical addition to his oeuvre," writes David Poland. "Lumet is no stranger to complex narrative, but here, in his 83rd year, he is playing with time sequencing to tell a story that is more complex than almost any that others proclaimed for the effort have tried, yet narratively clean as a whistle."

"If Lumet intended to make a tragedy or even an effective melodrama, he would have done well to expend just a little bit of empathy," suggests Jürgen Fauth. "Tragedy shows a good person who makes a bad choice, but Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a tale of just desserts. Though the ending is pitched at an intense level of drama, it doesn't register emotionally: the bastards had it coming anyway."

"Devil has a bare-bones speed and agility that recalls the director's groundbreaking work in early 1950s TV," writes the Boston Globe's Scott Heller. "An inside-the-park home-run for Lumet, who I hope has at least a few more movies in him."

"Despite unexpected pacing and awkward plot twists, Lumet's movie works so well because of his emphasis on domestic drama in the midst of pulp content; and expert acting from a nimble cast combine to make a forceful, haunting thriller," writes Stephen Garrettt at indieWIRE.

At the Reeler, Vadim Rizov gathers comments from Lumet's NYFF press conference following a screening of the film that is "for an hour, at least,... as strong as anything Lumet's done. The reasons have as much to do with the cast... as with Lumet's typically low-key approach, a reliance on non-flashy shots and unobtrusive edits that become compellingly bravura the more angles Lumet finds to shoot in claustrophobic situations."

Cameron French talks with Lumet for Reuters. Via Movie City News.

Deborah Solomon talks with Hawke for the New York Times Magazine.

Earlier: The first round of reviews hit about two weeks ago.

Updates, 9/24: "They get mean when they get old, these great directors," begins Steven Boone at the House Next Door. "Hitchcock made the merciless, despairing Frenzy at 73. Woody Allen wrote and directed the godless-universe tragedy Match Point at 70. And now 83-year-old Sidney Lumet damns us all with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. But just like Frenzy and Match Point, Lumet's crime saga pulsates with a sense of its creator's pure joy of filmmaking. 'Unimaginably pleasurable to make,' Orson Welles once told Peter Bogdanovich of the former's ecstatically grim Touch of Evil. Well, even as the bodies slump over bleeding in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, you can almost hear Lumet giggling."

Online listening tip. Matt Singer and Alison Willmore of IFC News discuss the film, Lumet and Hoffman.

Updates, 9/25: "It's all dark, dreary and pretty captivating until the blood-soaked conclusion, in which the story goes off the deep end and takes any sense of engagement we had with it," writes Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog.

Jeffrey Wells takes a close look at the new poster.

Update, 9/26: "It's a straight-up melodrama at its best, which, as Lumet stated at the post-screening press conference, is when the story defines the characters," writes Erik Davis at Cinematical. "The script (written by playwright Kelly Masterson) in other hands, with other actors involved, most likely would have churned out a decent, but easily forgettable drama. But with Lumet, and this cast, we get a film that's exceptional in every way - from its execution to its acting - and is sure to go down as one of Lumet's best in years."

Posted by dwhudson at September 23, 2007 3:18 PM