REVIEWS OF THE CINEMA’S EVIL TWINS

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD, and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

By Joel Johnson

I have chosen to link these two reviews. These two films have been released into theaters at the same time and will often be playing side by side in your favorite movie house (just as they were in mine). Not only that, but they cover the same territory, plumbing the depths of evil. Moviegoers are confronted with making a choice as to which of these similar films to choose to see. I would recommend both, but I do have a preference.

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD

Directed by Sidney Lumet; written by Kelly Masterson; cinematography by Ron Fortunato; edited by Tom Swartwout; music by Carter Burwell; production design by Christopher Nowak; art direction by Wing Lee; set decoration by Diane Lederman; costume design by Tina Nigro With: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, Rosemary Harris, Marisa Tomei, Brian F. O’Byrne, Amy Ryan, Aleksa Palladino, Michael Shannon, Arija Bareikis, and Leonardo Cimino. Rated R for a scene of strong graphic sexuality, nudity, violence, drug use, and language. Running time: 123 minutes

Octogenarian filmmaker Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network) has been directing for about sixty years, learning his craft in the early days of television. For decades, he has been taking audiences into the seedy underbelly of New York City and exposing the raw nerves of people under extreme duress. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is another memorable picture that continues this brand of films.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is, essentially, a family film, but it is certainly not the kind of film that anyone touting family values would want to endorse. However, it should be noted that the film definitely has a biblical level of archetypal familial treachery. The central players are two brothers named Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke), who find their incomes failing to meet the financial demands of the lives they would like to be able to live. Andy, the elder, convinces the younger Hank to join in a conspiracy to rob a jewelry store outside New York City in suburban Westchester. The irony is crystal clear as he describes the as yet unnamed target as “a mom-and-pop operation” because the targeted jewelry store is run by their mother Nanette (Rosemary Harris) and father Charles (Albert Finney). In a typical big brother move, Andy leaves the actual holdup to Hank. Hank, however, decides to recruit Bobby (Brian F. O’Byrne), a more experienced criminal, to help with the robbery. When Bobby realizes that his partner is a clueless novice to the world of armed robbery, he decides to reassign the division of labor so that he will be the only one to go into the store, and Hank will just be the wheelman in the rented getaway car. Things immediately go wrong when the woman opening the store turns out to be Nanette instead of the “blind-as-a-bat” clerk who usually works there. Within moments, Bobby’s corpse spectacularly blows out the glass of the store’s front door, and Nanette is inside severely wounded. The robbery foiled, the brothers begin a cover-up on their involvement in the crime. One of the lessons of Watergate was, of course, that the cover-up is always worse than the crime. Since the crime itself was pretty heinous, audiences should buckle their seatbelts because they are in for a bumpy ride.

This is a superbly acted film with Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the catalyst for all of the resulting mayhem, delivering another performance that stands out within a terrific ensemble. His Andy remains empathetic despite the lengthening list of calumny under his name. However, he is not the only one with moral failings to tally. Albert Finney’s Charles seems to have been nearly as cold and hard as a father as the precious gems he sells in his store. Hank has a thing for his brother’s beautiful wife Gina (Marisa Tomei). The late Bobby’s girlfriend Chris (Aleksa Palladino) quickly hatches a blackmail scheme with her malevolent so-called brother Dex (Michael Shannon) to give her and her baby a “settlement.” There’s a backstreet jewel dealer (Leonardo Cimino) who trades in stolen stones and betrayed confidences. There’s Hank’s ex-wife (Amy Ryan) who knows exactly where and how to deliver her scorpion bites to her chronically insolvent ex’s ego.

While there is an abundance of finely wrought performances of human malice, this becomes its Achilles’ heel as well as its strength. The audience is confronted with a film for which there is no moral center-no character for whom the audience roots. Although there is an untainted sister Katherine (Arija Bareikis), Kelly Masterson’s otherwise fine script gives her character short shrift to make much of an impression. There’s no significant character external to the family-like a police investigator-to serve this purpose in the drama. The police generally seem totally disinterested in how a small-time hood from Manhattan decided to pull a job in Westchester and, despite being killed while doing it, did so without any apparent means of escape. It would seem somewhat unlikely for the police in a relatively low-crime community not to have any curiosity about investigating a major crime that happened on their patch or failing to having any empathy for the victimized storeowner. Perhaps more central to the story is an additional credibility issue regarding the adulterous Gina and Hank. Hawke’s Hank is an inept mess who seems to have neither the balls nor the brains to conduct such a taboo affair. The only way such a portrayal could successfully incorporate the affair would be to turn Hank into a character like the Bible’s Joseph being victimized by Potiphar’s wife. However, Tomei’s Gina is not being played as an aggressive seductress but as a deeply needy and weak woman.

Clearly, the octogenarian director still has it and doesn’t need to apologize for still trying to make films, even if this probably is a minor classic beside his best films. It is well written and well acted. It is an engaging-if a distasteful-plumbing of the depths of evil and betrayal. The title comes from an Irish blessing, which in full goes: “May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.” With characters like these, the devil will be waiting with open arms.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

Directed by Ethan and Joel Coen; written by Joel and Ethan Coen from the novel by Cormac McCarthy; cinematography by Roger Deakins; edited by Ethan and Joel Coen; original music by Carter Burwell; production design by Jess Gonchor; art direction by John P. Goldsmith; set decoration by Nancy Haigh; costume design by Mary Zophres

With: Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson, Tess Harper, and Barry Corbin. Rated R for some strong graphic violence and some language. Running time: 122 minutes

If the devil seems to be waiting just off-camera ready to collect the souls that he is due in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, the devil seems to have won the audition to play “the ultimate badass” Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in the Coen brothers’ new film based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel. Rarely has a movie been so compelling while featuring such a jet-black villain who is so straightforwardly ruthless, devoid of charm, and yet rigorously follows his own eccentric code of conduct. Bardem’s masterful performance of controlled malevolence casts a shadow that drains the life out of every other character that he meets or who simply has the knowledge that Chigurh is out there somewhere-biding his time, waiting to strike. He is everyone’s worst nightmare come to life.

No one is probably more affected by the knowledge that Bardem’s character walks through his Texas county than Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). Bell spends most of the film being a step behind a tsunami of mayhem that has swept across his jurisdiction. It begins with an OK Corral–like shoot-out in a particularly desolate spot in west Texas in 1980. Ne’er-do-well Vietnam vet Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) misses his antelope while hunting but stumbles in late to the firefight just in time to snatch a satchel full of money left abandoned in the deal gone extremely wrong between Mexican and American drug thugs. Whatever head start he might have had is lost when his belated good deed to rescue a wounded Mexican pleading for “agua” (water) puts him and his vehicle at the scene when a salvage team from one of the disputing business parties shows up. It is the first of many deadly encounters where Llewelyn will have to defend his right to this ill-gotten cash.

Anton Chigurh is brought into the mess to recover the missing cash at the behest of one of the interested parties to the ill-fated business deal, but it quickly becomes apparent that Chigurh does not work for or with anyone besides himself. So very violent and suspenseful cat-and-mouse games commence between Moss, Chigurh, bounty hunter Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), the Mexican drug smugglers, American drug dealers, and the aforementioned Sheriff Bell. The body count continues to grow, with the only respite seeming to be whether potential victims can win a coin toss that decides their fate.

The acting is outstanding across-the-board. Brolin is terrific as the opportunistic Moss who displays an uncanny array of guile and guts that belies his modest life in a low-end trailer park. Despite his obvious life-on-the-edge of legality lifestyle, it is hard not to root for this survivor to finally get the once-in-a-lifetime big payday for himself and his family. Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald buries her brogue for a Texas drawl in playing Llewelyn’s pretty young wife Carla Jean as an innocent worldly enough to be full of foreboding. Harrelson hits his marks as the smartly dressed hired gun whose only mistake is to think he might be more clever than his would-be prey. Tommy Lee Jones delivers a measured, economical performance that is both forthrightly courageous and stricken with the malignancy of knowing absolutely pure evil. Two smaller roles are key to the story. Tess Harper impressively uses thespian shorthand to show the audience how she is the supportive Sheriff’s wife who can keep the dread of evil at bay by helping Bell maintain contact with life’s simple joys. Character actor Barry Corbin emerges from the hard-baked Texas dust late in the film’s third act as Sheriff Bell’s old lawman cousin to help Bell come to terms with his crisis of confidence.

The audience is grabbed by this tremendous film in its opening scene, periodically the grip relaxes, but it never lets go. It provides a broad canvas of good and evil. There are characters that engender considerable empathy from the audience, allowing them to deeply care how things work out for that individual. Unlike Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, there are several characters to root for, such as Sheriff Bell, Carla Jean, minor characters such as Gene Jones’s gas station proprietor, and, especially, Llewelyn Moss. The technical aspects of the film are first rate but are totally subsumed to the task of telling the film’s story. There’s nothing showy to stand out and overshadow the story that is being told. The story itself is so compelling that the Coens nearly totally dispense with using music to underscore the emotional tones in this film and most filmgoers will not sense that anything is missing.