I don't know where this story of family dysfunctions and crime came from. It's all hatred and intrigue and betrayal and weakness and ruthlessness. Substitute swords for the guns and it could have been Aeschylus.
God, what a depressing movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman -- and, Phil, please, let's knock off the middle names? -- Philip Seymour Hoffman is the self-indulgent, wicked son of jewelry-store owner Albert Finney. Hoffman is married to the sexual Spatlese Marisa Tomei but, what with all his drug use and obsession with self, he can't satisfy her. He can't even TALK to her about anything much. Hoffman works at a real estate office where he has become a master of the universe by embezzlement and is about to be undone by an IRS audit. He needs the dough badly. Although he lives well enough by the standards of New York City, he wants still more, so that he can whisk himself and his wife away to an eternal vacation in Rio de Janeiro. In order to get the money, he enlists the help of his weakling younger brother, Ethan Hawke, in a crazy scheme to rob their parents jewelry store in Westchester at a time when nobody is behind the counter except an old lady who is deaf and blind.
Are you following all this? Good, because there will be a quiz. And don't bother trying to find this in Cliff's Notes either.
I'm going to skip the rest of the plot details because by now you must have the general picture. Man, is this a Sidney Lumet film. Everybody is helpless in the grip of the tentacular city. The angel of principle is perched on one shoulder and the devil of solipsism on the other. Nobody truly loves anybody else. And in the end, Hoffman is responsible for the deaths of his mother and, far worse, his drug supplier. Hawke is responsible for the death of a louche friend. Finney is responsible for the death of Hoffman. And -- I forget.
The direction by Lumet is okay, except for a few jarring cuts between scenes that come across like a sudden burst of static on FM radio during Easy Listening Hour. That's unlike Lumet, whose transitions are usually nicely linear. Ditto for the story itself, which switches back and forth within the time frame, along with subtitles like "Charlie: The Day of the Robbery." I don't know what prompted the use of this slightly dizzying structure but it, too, is unusual for Lumet.
The performances are all up to par, what you'd expect from such a seasoned cast. Hoffman is, as we've come to expect, sublimely competent in his role. He's an easy-going gent who is a seething, neural shambles inside. When he's making his pitch to Hawke, he makes robbing your mother's and father's store sound like a slam dunk, and an amusingly ironic one at that. And when he's got a gun aimed at someone, he trembles all over, a Vesuvius about to pop.
But -- I don't know. The whole thing, as nicely done as it is, is such a downer that I don't think I'd want to watch it again. Definitely worth seeing once, though, if for nothing other than Philip S. Hoffman's performance.
God, what a depressing movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman -- and, Phil, please, let's knock off the middle names? -- Philip Seymour Hoffman is the self-indulgent, wicked son of jewelry-store owner Albert Finney. Hoffman is married to the sexual Spatlese Marisa Tomei but, what with all his drug use and obsession with self, he can't satisfy her. He can't even TALK to her about anything much. Hoffman works at a real estate office where he has become a master of the universe by embezzlement and is about to be undone by an IRS audit. He needs the dough badly. Although he lives well enough by the standards of New York City, he wants still more, so that he can whisk himself and his wife away to an eternal vacation in Rio de Janeiro. In order to get the money, he enlists the help of his weakling younger brother, Ethan Hawke, in a crazy scheme to rob their parents jewelry store in Westchester at a time when nobody is behind the counter except an old lady who is deaf and blind.
Are you following all this? Good, because there will be a quiz. And don't bother trying to find this in Cliff's Notes either.
I'm going to skip the rest of the plot details because by now you must have the general picture. Man, is this a Sidney Lumet film. Everybody is helpless in the grip of the tentacular city. The angel of principle is perched on one shoulder and the devil of solipsism on the other. Nobody truly loves anybody else. And in the end, Hoffman is responsible for the deaths of his mother and, far worse, his drug supplier. Hawke is responsible for the death of a louche friend. Finney is responsible for the death of Hoffman. And -- I forget.
The direction by Lumet is okay, except for a few jarring cuts between scenes that come across like a sudden burst of static on FM radio during Easy Listening Hour. That's unlike Lumet, whose transitions are usually nicely linear. Ditto for the story itself, which switches back and forth within the time frame, along with subtitles like "Charlie: The Day of the Robbery." I don't know what prompted the use of this slightly dizzying structure but it, too, is unusual for Lumet.
The performances are all up to par, what you'd expect from such a seasoned cast. Hoffman is, as we've come to expect, sublimely competent in his role. He's an easy-going gent who is a seething, neural shambles inside. When he's making his pitch to Hawke, he makes robbing your mother's and father's store sound like a slam dunk, and an amusingly ironic one at that. And when he's got a gun aimed at someone, he trembles all over, a Vesuvius about to pop.
But -- I don't know. The whole thing, as nicely done as it is, is such a downer that I don't think I'd want to watch it again. Definitely worth seeing once, though, if for nothing other than Philip S. Hoffman's performance.