50 Top 10 Lists of 2007

Top 10 Movies (Richard Schickel)

#3. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

It's the year of Philip Seymour Hoffman — three great and wildly disparate performances in the widest imaginable variety of contexts (see #7). In Sidney Lumet's darkly comic film he plans the heist of his own Mom and Pop's jewelry store, which turns out not to be quite the masterstroke he had in mind. At one level the movie is a wonderfully intricate exploration of family dysfunction. At another, it's a coolly controlled examination of increasingly insane criminal ineptitude. Either way you look at, this is a hypnotizing film from one of our great masters.

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