I finished watching "Before the Devil..." ten minutes ago. It is relentlessly grim, full of good performances, and sadly misdirected. It blames the individuals for all of their actions, but it hints at the same time at the forces that make them tick. Brothers Andrew and Henry commit some missteps as citizens to ensure happiness, but if you watch closely, it is their women who are pushing them right at the abyss. Gina (Marisa Tomei) and Martha (the first real star from "The Wire", Amy Ryan) escape the story unscathed after crushing their husbands' hopes scene after scene. After all feminism's whining and crying of the last fifty years, it is men here who must kill, rob and suffer even when they're not directly asked to.

In fact, the most remarkable characteristic of this film is not its already outdated fragmentation of the plotline or the desaturated look seen in many other films in the lasts years but the way in which it portrays how individualism in America puts people against each other and makes nobody care about the rest (including the father, a vengeful Albert Finney that seems ready to do what God tells him to). It will seem sacrilegious to some, but I prefer the sensational Vin Diesel in the previous film by Lumet, another reflection about another part of the American psyche, but a more optimistic and funny one.



PD: Andrew (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) could simply ask for a big bank or credit card loan and never pay it back (is not that Citibank was going to chase him to Brazil, you know?)