Poor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Poor Ethan Hawke. Waittaminute! Poor me!
Why should I feel sorry for these two fine actors-they chose to be in this movie. I on the other hand was a hapless viewer who didn’t know that Marisa Tomei would be in it. I’m the victim here.
I finally slipped into uneasy sleep last night after watching this ‘dumpster baby’ of a movie and I thought how it could have been better. I didn’t know where to start.
Sidney Lumet was a mediocre director once. He made two movies that get a lot of ‘good movie cred’, “Serpico” and “Dog Day Afternoon” (and “The Wiz”!) but years and senility have addled his brain. The movie has the feel of a 1970′s drama, and a bad one at that.
The characters Hawke and Hoffman create could have done just well in a story centered their feeble, greedy, and misdirected lives without a ‘crime gone wrong’ formula. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is mildly pleasing when Hoffman and/or Hawke are onscreen. Hoffman’s eyebrows alone are worth filming.
His gut? Enchanting. His waddle? Adorable. Getting to see him have doggie style sex with somebody? I creamed myself at “doggie”.
The movie’s last minutes are a tired “I’m gonna smother someone to death in the hospital while putting their heart monitor on my chest” cliche that I’ve seen shot-for-shot before in better movies.
But let’s turn our attention to the monster haunting this film: Marisa Tomei. When she won Best Supporting Actress in My Cousin Vinny, I remember going into my bedroom and tearing up the valentines I’d written to the Academy. And like a herpes flare up, she’s back and pooping up the silver screen again.
There is a phenomenon that I call the “Editor’s Isolation Booth” or EIB. This is when an actor/actress is so horrible that they cannot act in the same room with someone else. They need their acting coach, the director, their dialogue coach at the ready and just outside of camera range. So, you get a lot of meduim close ups of just them. Believe me, I don’t think she and Hoffman were in the same room together but for 2 minutes to get some establishing shot that they were supposedly talking to each other.
I really believe that for Hoffman to get through his scenes (some very good acting from him) he had to have a real actress to work off. Tomei is deplorable. She is like watching a clown at a 5 year old’s birthday party who is trying to hide the fact that he is drunk and having a heart attack.
So if you’re into watching bad movies from the 1970′s with little payoff or entertainment value, you might want to watch this rather than be hunted by a pack of wolves.
Ryan McGivern
