Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Village Voice J. Hoberman

The movie grabs hold and runs you through the wringer.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Mesmerizing.

Christian Science Monitor Robert Koehler

One of the great American films of the past decade, and the crowning masterpiece of Lumet's long career.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

This flick is fast and ferocious, his (Sidney Lumet) sharpest and best since "Prince of the City" (1980) - and surely one of the year's finest.

Slate Dana Stevens

Offers the rare pleasure of watching a major director return to his own material and rework it 30 years later. This story of a pitiful jewel heist gone so profoundly wrong that it approaches the scope of Greek tragedy isn't quite a remake of "Dog Day Afternoon."

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

In addition to being a study in great acting, this is a study in great directing.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A superb crime melodrama.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A wicked deconstruction of a dysfunctional clan: brothers at each other's throats; a father whose legacy is anger and betrayal; an unfaithful wife; a history of deceit. It's a horror show of hatred and festering psychic wounds.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Its virtues are velocity, energy, innovative storytelling - and something that seems even more the province of young directors: a certain heartlessness and ironic distance in the tone.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Compact, nasty, and altogether wonderful, a tale of brotherly greed and New York comeuppance that shows an old dog dusting off old tricks using new technology.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Emotionally brutal, ferociously acted, crafted with unflagging expertise and relentlessly locked in its vision of human darkness, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is as grim and despairing as any tragedy by Sophocles or Shakespeare.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Bleak, weirdly witty at times and unrelentingly suspenseful, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is the cinematic equivalent of a perfect storm.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

This is no nostalgia trip taken by an 83-year-old director. It's a fierce, hot slap of a movie, a shameless melodrama with bite.

Time Richard Schickel

It is, like quite a few Lumet pictures, rather small in scale, easy to overlook. But I think it is time to gather around a director who has embraced his octogenarian bleakness and sing his praises. Ultimately, I think you'll laugh a lot at what he has wrought here -- but only well after the movie is over and the full scale of its perversity settles into your bones.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

His (Sidney Lumet) touch in Before the Devil is so sure, so perfectly weighted, that it’s hard to imagine him capable of making a bad movie. The thing is just enthralling.

The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck

Pungently atmospheric, brilliantly textured and featuring superb performances from every performer in parts big and small.

Variety Lisa Nesselson

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

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

While the evil that men do to one another in this film may well be rooted in the Cain-like enabling of original sin from one doomed brother to another, the final familial tragedy feels exactly like classic Lumet.

USA Today Claudia Puig

One bad idea can unravel and ruin lives in unimaginably horrific ways.That's the concept underlying the riveting Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, a sharply acted and highly entertaining morality play.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A dynamite film that ranks with the year's best.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The true star of this nerve-racking family crime drama, shot with a minimum of fuss by Ron Fortunato, is playwright and first-time screenwriter Kelly Masterson's deft script, which carefully develops each fatally flawed character and tells their stories in achronological flashbacks that seamlessly fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Arguably Lumet's best film in 20 years.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The action is violent, messy, and threaded through with dark humor. This is a movie for grownups, for sure, but it has a mulish kick that most such pictures consider themselves to tasteful to aspire to.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Ultimately, the film is just a smart caper picture with some good performances, but at times it's VERY smart, and Hoffman's performance in particular is one of the most natural and unexpectedly affecting that he's given in years.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Curiously exhilarating. Some of this comes from the simple thrill of witnessing something, or rather everything, done well.

The New Yorker David Denby

Furious and entertaining little morality play.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

This is not a drama of shadings, but of ever-increasing intensity.

Empire Helen O'Hara

Bleak, brutal and quite possibly brilliant, this is a triumphant return to form for Lumet and further proof that Hoffman is on an incredible winning streak.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Atmosphere is the main virtue with which this "Devil" can tempt us.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

This is an adrenaline-pumping, devilishly well-made thriller set against the downfall of an American family.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Philip Seymour Hoffman is in fine form as a man teetering on the edge.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

What you’re left with, finally, is the pleasure of a wily director’s company. In much the same way John Huston defied convention and predictability in the third act of his directorial career, with films as odd and fresh as “Wise Blood” and “Prizzi’s Honor,” Lumet is doing the same, right now.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The only player in this tawdry round-robin game who moved or seduced me in any way was Andy’s poor, hapless Gina. Tomei’s an ordinary beauty... But she has real screen presence and range, and her neglected wife is an artful inversion of her Oscar-winning role as Danny DeVito’s pert squeeze in "My Cousin Vinny."

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The result is not a first-class film noir but a top-grade acting class. You admire it without enjoying it.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The problem is not that the director is working but that his latest film is working too hard. Way too hard – this thing is melodrama running a marathon.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Even though it's scripted by a woman (Kelly Masterson), this tale of buried family resentments rising to the surface as the brothers plot to rob their parents' jewelry store is concerned only with the guys, and it's marred by an uncharacteristically mannered performance by Albert Finney as the father.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

The evident strengths and laudable intentions of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (and even the appeal of Marisa Tomei in her undies) are overwhelmed by an implausible plot verging on unintentional comedy and a panoply of Noo Yawk dirt-bag supporting characters who might've seemed awkward on a 1993 episode of "NYPD Blue."