Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet, 2007)

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney, Aleksa Palladino, Michael Shannon, Amy Ryan, Brían F. O'Byrne, Rosemary Harris. Screenplay: Kelly Masterson. Cinematography: Ron Fortunato. Production design: Christopher Nowak. Film editing: Tom Swartwout. Music: Carter Burwell.

This unrelentingly bleak family/crime drama was Sidney Lumet's last film as a director, and I can only say that he went out at the top of his form. That it was also one of the last films of Albert Finney and also starred another actor gone before his time, Philip Seymour Hoffman, only adds to its melancholy weight. Hoffman is at his best as Andy Hanson, the financially overextended older son, who tries to drag his brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) into a scheme to rob their parents' suburban mall jewelry store. Andy persuades Hank that it would be a victimless crime: They'd collect the loot and their parents would collect the insurance. Everything goes wrong with this scheme that you might imagine. It's complicated, for example, by the fact that Hank is sleeping with Andy's wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). Hawke is superb in the role of Hank, a weak, spoiled younger brother now gone to seed -- a part that fits the actor perfectly as he ages out of the boyish good looks that once made some critics dismiss him as a lightweight. And midway through the film, when things have gone so wrong that the men's mother, Nanette (Rosemary Harris), lies comatose from the shooting that took place during the botched robbery, we meet Charles, their father, played by the always reliable Finney. The brothers are already in trouble because the wife and brother of the man Hank hired to do the job, who was killed in the heist, want hush money. Things get even worse when their father, urged implacably on by grief and anger, begins investigating what brought about his wife's death. Kelly Masterson's screenplay doesn't give Tomei enough to do in the story, but every moment when she's on screen is memorable, particularly the scene in which she leaves Andy. Lumet stages this in their apartment with a long take that holds Andy in the background as Gina struggles to haul her suitcase to the door, all the while delivering the news that she's been sleeping with his brother. Andy doesn't react immediately to this bit of information, but even later when he meets with Hank again, Hoffman lets us see how it's seething inside him. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is not an easy film to watch; it's perhaps a little too grim and sordid for its own good. But at its best it's the kind of morality tale you might find in medieval literature, in the darker moments of Chaucer and Boccaccio, and it has some of the burden of greed and hubris that afflicts the families of Greek tragedy, even to the point of reversing the story of Oedipus in its stunning outcome.

Miller's Crossing (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 1990)

Watched 10/8/2018

Gabriel Byrne and John Turturro in Miller's Crossing

Tom Reagan: Gabriel Byrne
Verna: Marcia Gay Harden
Leo O'Bannon: Albert Finney
Bernie Bernbaum: John Turturro
Johnny Caspar: Jon Polito
Eddie Dane: J.E. Freeman
Frankie: Mike Starr
Tic-Tac: Al Mancini
Mink Larouie: Steve Buscemi
Mayor Dale Levander: Richard Woods
Mayor's Secretary: Frances McDormand

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cinematography: Barry Sonnenfeld
Production design: Dennis Gassner
Film editing: Michael R. Miller
Music: Carter Burwell

Miller's Crossing is the wit and cruelty of hard-boiled fiction like Dashiell Hammett's filtered through Warner Bros. gangster films of the 1930s, further filtered through film noir of the 1940s and served up by the postmodern sensibilities of Joel and Ethan Coen. It was a box office flop, but it has a cadre of admirers, many of whom, like David Thomson, ordinarily look askance at the smart-aleckiness of the Coens. There is much to admire, starting with pitch-perfect performances by the underused Gabriel Byrne, the always brilliant Albert Finney, and the shrewdly enticing Marcia Gay Harden, along with a gallery of character actors that rival those of the peak years of the Hollywood studios. Carter Burwell's score is, as always, essential. And there are some delicious moments, such as the discovery of the body of "Rug" Daniels by a small boy and his dog, who cocks his head quizzically as the boy filches the corpse's toupee, thereby providing something of a red herring for those who want to figure out who killed Rug. But on the whole, the film leaves me a little cold. It feels like a period piece for the sake of being a period piece and not because it has anything of substance to say about the chosen period.

Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)

Albert Finney and Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich: Julia Roberts
Ed Masry: Albert Finney
George: Aaron Eckhart
Brenda: Conchata Ferrell
Donna Jensen: Marg Helgenberger
Pete Jensen: Michael Harney
Pamela Duncan: Cherry Jones
Charles Embry: Tracey Walter
Kurt Potter: Peter Coyote
David Foil: T.J. Thyne
Theresa Dallavale: Veanne Cox

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay: Susannah Grant
Cinematography: Edward Lachman
Production design: Philip Messina
Film editing: Anne V. Coates
Music: Thomas Newman

Any film that purports to be what the title character of Erin Brockovich calls a "David and what's-his-name" story is bound to be somewhat formulaic. But I can forgive Steven Soderbergh's movie for its clichés, such as the hunky next-door neighbor who provides Erin with sex and babysitting, or the starchy, tightly wound female lawyer who tries and fails to do the kind of work in signing up participants in the lawsuit that comes so naturally to Erin. We're asked to swallow a lot of narrative shortcutting in the relationship that she builds with Ed Masry, too. But it's to Julia Roberts's great Oscar-winning credit that she makes this fictionalized version of a real person (whom we see early in the film in the role of a waitress) as believable as she does, with the considerable help of the invaluable (but never Oscar-winning) Albert Finney. I've always thought that Soderbergh is undermined by his choice of material: Traffic, which came out the same year as Erin Brockovich and won an Oscar for Soderbergh, is weakened by the difficulty of cramming so many interlocking stories into the confines of a feature film, and it too suffers from some formulaic plotting. But Erin Brockovich makes the case for the feel-good movie with its director's obvious delight in providing a showcase for such skilled actors. This is what makes his Ocean's movies (20001, 2004, 2007) and Magic Mike (2012) so entertaining. Would a grittier approach with less charismatic stars have done a better job of telling the story of Brockovich and Masry's fight with PG&E? Yes, probably. But there's something to be said for good things in glossy packages.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960)

Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Arthur: Albert Finney
Doreen: Shirley Anne Field
Brenda: Rachel Roberts
Aunt Ada: Hylda Baker
Bert: Norman Rossington
Jack: Bryan Pringle
Robboe: Robert Cawdron
Mrs. Bull: Edna Morris
Mrs. Seaton: Elsie Wagstaff
Mr. Seaton: Frank Pettit
Blousy Woman: Avis Bunnage
Loudmouth: Colin Blakely
Doreen's Mother: Irene Richmond

Director: Karel Reisz
Screenplay: Alan Sillitoe
Based on a novel by Alan Sillitoe
Cinematography: Freddie Francis
Art direction: Edward Marshall
Music: John Dankworth

The 24-year-old Albert Finney was spot-on casting for the antihero of Alan Sillitoe's adaptation of his novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. With his slicked-up coif, predatory grin, and omnipresent cigarette, Finney's Arthur Seaton exudes the kind of sexual attractiveness that allows one to ignore his rough edges. Always on the prowl, Arthur is the quintessential working-class yobbo, drinking too much and sleeping around too carelessly. He gets his comeuppance when Brenda, married to the stodgy Jack, becomes pregnant -- Jack's sexual neglect makes her sure the child is Arthur's -- and Jack's brother and another soldier work Arthur over in a vacant lot. Meanwhile, he has fallen for Doreen, and the film ends with Arthur and Doreen on a hillside overlooking their factory town, planning a wedding and dreaming of a home of their own. But from what we've seen of Arthur, this is almost a parody of a happy ending. Doreen's a tough cookie, too, and we can only foresee a kind of grim muddling-through future, a recapitulation of the lives of their parents and neighbors. It's to the credit of Finney and a superb supporting cast that the film is not a dreary slog through blighted lives, but a kind of tribute to the persistent energy of the working class. It helps that the movie is filmed by the great Freddie Francis, who finds a rich palette of grays in the surroundings, and provides a needed burst of action in the fairgrounds sequence. But above all, it's Finney's show, launching one of the great movie careers, from rakish young leading man to invaluable character actor.

The Entertainer (Tony Richardson, 1960)

Sleazy old Archie Rice was one of Laurence Olivier's theatrical triumphs, proof that a renowned classical actor, known for his Hamlet and Oedipus and Coriolanus, could take on the "kitchen-sink realism" of an Angry Young Man, John Osborne, and add glory to his already celebrated name. But the film version is an example of the difficulties that have to be overcome when a play is translated into a movie. For even though Tony Richardson, who directed the 1957 Royal Court Theatre version, also directed the film, and the play's author did the screenplay as well (in collaboration with Nigel Kneale), the movie lacks energy and direction. The play alternates between what's going on in Archie Rice's house and his performances on stage, while the film "opens up" to show the English seaside resort town where Archie's music-hall is located, and some of the events that are merely narrated in the play, such as Archie's affair with a young woman whose family he tries to persuade to back him in a new show, are dramatized in the movie. Olivier's creation of the "dead behind the eyes" Archie is superb, and his music-hall turns in the film manage to suggest that even though he was a hack as a performer Archie could have held an audience's attention, though it's clear that seeing Olivier on an actual stage would have had a stronger impact from sheer immediacy. The cast is uniformly fine: Brenda de Banzie as Archie's second wife, Roger Livesey as his father (Livesey was in fact only a year older than Olivier), Joan Plowright as his daughter, and making their film debuts, Alan Bates and Albert Finney as his sons. But in the end it's a collection of impressive performances in service of a not very involving story of a self-destructive man and his dysfunctional family.