"You don't look happy. Mind if I call you Groucho?"

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is pretty damned intense. I had a vague memory of hearing it was good but couldn't remember what it was about. Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymore Hoffman and Albery Finney really shine as brothers and their father who do not get along on any level. On the surface it's a simple heist gone wrong movie, but it's really about the complexities that exist in families. The tenuous relationships between siblings, husbands/wives, parents/children are all explored, and to a raw, vicious degree. I enjoyed the format in which different pieces of each scenario were shown from different characters points of view. Brandon didn't find it as compelling and thought it could have been done a bit more elegantly, but we both liked the movie very much. We agreed that it was odd to watch a movie in which neither of the main protagonists have any redeemable qualities and never even attempt to make amends for their behavior. They just keep making things worse and we never rooted for them at all. In the end we were really only rooting for someone to give them their comeuppance.