ViewGuide

Created Mar 29, 2008 01:00PM PST • Edited Apr 23, 2016 01:07PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   This engrossing and cleverly constructed family/heist picture features a host of great performers in front of the camera and the estimable Sidney Lumet behind it. The movie effectively flashes back and forth in time, showing how a couple of ne’er-do-well brothers ensnare everyone around them in the blowback from their disastrous criminal venture.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Great cast! Philip Seymour Hoffman – in his second son-gone-wrong role of 2007, the other being The Savages – turns in a wonderfully slippery performance as a man living two lives too many. Ethan Hawke comes through as his dim younger brother, for whom charm has long since failed as a social passport.

   Albert Finney ably plays grief stricken and then revenge bound as their father. Rosemary Harris (Peter Parker’s Aunt May in Spider-Man) employs her wonderful voice and matronly courage to great effect as their mother. Last but not least, Marisa Tomei delivers yet another solid post-glamour performance.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    The great Lumet nimbly shows us the set-up, the build-up, the heist, the immediate aftermath, and the longer term devastation in a series of interlocking flashbacks and forwards.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Great 4.0

    Three cheers for first time screenwriter Kelly Masterson. His original screenplay has the heft and depth of a novel.

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Good 3.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

17. Sex Titillating 1.7

    Implied rather than shown, including one brother’s patronization of a male prostitute.

18. Violence Fierce 1.9

19. Rudeness Salty 1.9

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    Impressively realistic

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.4

    Since it is fiction, I have to give it greater than 1.0 on CircoReality.

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0