Sydney Lumet treads on a path already well broken by the Coen Brother in their classic Fargo - crooked middle class people who commit crimes of violence against their own family to cover up their earlier crimes of deceit. However, while Fargo was cleverly plotted and darkly humorous, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is not only deadly serious, but so predictable as to be tedious. It was obvious from early on in the film that the protagonists were damned, and so each further step they take into debauchery is almost wearisome. Further, the drama was aided not one wit by the annoying use of non-chronological story telling. Mr. Lumet seems to have forgotten the basics of drama in his anxiousness to tell the world just how despicably money hungry and self-indulgent the American middle class is.
