Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007) is a masterclass in dissecting the corrosive weight of desperation, woven through a non-linear narrative that feels like a Greek tragedy colliding with a heist gone wrong. Lumet, in his final directorial effort, crafts a film that thrives on the raw interplay of human flaws, with the screenplay by Kelly Masterson serving as a taut scaffold for moral decay. The story of two brothers Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a scheming financier drowning in debt, and Hank (Ethan Hawke), a weaker-willed everyman unfolds as a botched robbery spirals into catastrophic consequences, exposing the fragility of familial ties.

Hoffman’s performance is the film’s pulsing heart, his Andy a volatile blend of cunning and despair, masking vulnerability with a veneer of control. His scenes with Hawke crackle with unspoken resentment, their sibling dynamic a microcosm of trust eroded by greed. Hawke, often overshadowed, brings a nervous fragility to Hank, his every choice a flinch against inevitability. Marisa Tomei, as Andy’s wife Gina, delivers a quietly devastating turn, her character caught in the crossfire of male ambition. Lumet’s direction leans into these performances, letting long takes and tight framing amplify the claustrophobia of their unraveling lives.

The non-linear structure, while occasionally disorienting, mirrors the characters’ fractured psyches, with each timeline shift revealing new layers of betrayal. Carter Burwell’s understated score a haunting pulse of strings and piano underscores the tension without overpowering it, a rare restraint in modern thrillers. Cinematographer Ron Fortunato’s muted palette of grays and browns transforms suburban New York into a moral wasteland, where strip malls and dingy apartments become stages for existential collapse.

Yet, the film isn’t flawless. The pacing falters in the second act, with some subplots like Hank’s financial struggles feeling underexplored, leaving Hawke’s character occasionally adrift. The female characters, particularly Tomei’s Gina, are given less depth than their male counterparts, a missed opportunity to fully humanize the collateral damage of the brothers’ actions. Still, these are minor cracks in an otherwise gripping edifice. Lumet’s ability to wring profound tragedy from a simple premise greed begets ruin makes Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead a searing meditation on the cost of chasing hollow desires, its echoes lingering like a wound that won’t heal.