Film

Although it’s being hailed as Lumet’s comeback, Devil has none of the escalating comic absurdity that made Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and Network (1976) so iconic. Well, there are shades of Dog Day, as there are in almost any film about a robbery gone awry. But both the melancholy Carter Burwell score and the plot—two brothers (Hoffman and Hawke) case their parents’ jewelry store—announce Devil as more of a Fargo derivative, imbued with the inevitability of Greek tragedy.

Kelly Masterson’s too-familiar script owes more to the pomo crime films of the early ’90s than it does to any of Lumet’s movies. (As in Reservoir Dogs, the robbery is shown out of order; “edgy” editing acrobatics and a lame typewriter noise—ka-ching, ka-ching—signal each temporal jump.) But Lumet is after something deeper than a simple game of double-cross, and he achieves it through casting: Hoffman’s cold, confident Andy makes a perfect physical contrast to Hawke’s sniveling ne’er-do-well Hank; the two actors couldn’t be more dissimilar, which makes them ideal as siblings who never behave the same way.

Andy even badgers their father (Finney) about whether they’re all in the same family. As it turns out, everything they do is related. Not only are both brothers sleeping with Andy’s wife (Tomei), but as their scheme unwinds, they can only steal from themselves. As in the best heist dramas, the loot is only a red herring. The true subject is the incestuous web in which the characters become ensnared.