Sidney Lumet: A Life Behind the Camera

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 2007
This film is some kind of ultimate answer to the "family values" poppycock that has polluted our sociopolitical discussions for so many years. But Lumet doesn't give us a lot of time for philosophical musings. This is the director's 45th movie, and like with all the best of them he just keeps driving his story along. Notoriously a fast director — the kind of guy who prefers getting things right on the first take — he is also, somewhat paradoxically, well known as an actor's director, which he surely is here. None of his performers (Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei) have ever been better.

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