Sidney Lumet
Onora il padre e la madre

It is not the best movie he has been in, but this is because there have been very few mediocre works he has succumbed to over the years (any reference to "Mission Impossible III" is intentional, confirmed, and nailed to the screen with a coffin nail). It is not even his best performance, and this only makes this gray winter day damn bitter. I first encountered Philip Seymour Hoffman, still as a minor, on the big screen in that masterpiece "The Big Lebowski": practically the first film I remember seeing in the cinema that captivated me. Since then, I have often stumbled upon this plump, melancholic, and sad actor with boundless talent. Thanks to debaser, I recently discovered a gem like "Happiness" (thank you "Eve"), and if I may, I recommend the semi-unknown "The Savages. I believe there are many other quality works, scattered here, there, and everywhere over twenty years of dense professional practice. His career was a rich one, and I truly regret that it ended with a syringe stuck in his arm, in cardiac arrest, on the mat near the toilet in his Manhattan home.

It is this very image that prompted me to write quickly and very concisely, for more than a review it is a stark tribute to "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" by Sidney Lumet. In more than one scene of the film, in fact, Hoffman has a needle stuck in his arm in search of an oasis of chemical well-being to interpose the progressive and inevitable collapse of a life.

Two brothers navigate dire financial situations. The older, cynical, and enterprising of the two concocts a Machiavellian plan to rob their parents' jewelry store by ensnaring his timid, inept, and emotional younger brother as an accomplice. Without wanting to reveal anything, the film with its clean and classical direction, cold and detached, will capture the cynicism and deceit of human beings, the power of chance in determining and intertwining events, and the purest state of suffering exalted by a cast featuring two excellent actors (Ethan Hawke and Albert Finney) and one extraordinary one.

It is a linear film, despite the continuous flashbacks, and tremendous because, no matter how much one doesn't want to admit it, it lays its foundations in the reality we can browse or click quite frequently. You can't trust anyone, not even your own blood.

At this moment, TV, the web, and print media are remembering Hoffman by almost exclusively citing the statue he won in 2006 for the film adaptation of "Capote", (the literary masterpiece by Capote which I strongly recommend you read, preferably sooner rather than later). I am convinced that Hoffman should be remembered as an actor for the qualitative average of his work which can also be appreciated in less celebrated works. Because a statue has even been won by Nicolas Cage and Halle Berry, but a filmography sparse in missteps and full of many convincing interpretations is a luxury that very few can boast at only 46 years old.

As a selfish lover of cinema, I say thank you infinitely with a sad look back; simultaneously, with a bit of a lump embedded in my throat, I feel like saying damn it for that mountain of quality works you still should and could have given us. A bloody loss for contemporary cinema.