83-year-old Sidney Lumet's new movie is out: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead...
The advertised premise for the movie is:
When two brothers organise the robbery of their parents' jewellery store the job goes horribly wrong...
Margaret and David both gave it 4 stars!
I'd give it hmmm... 2 or 4 stars... not really sure!
The fractured sequence of events allowed for the building up of ethical tension in the viewers mind. The storyboard provoked me to think about the nature of the events being payed out in front of me... I kept asking myself "do desperate times call for desperate measures?" "how far would I go?" " why would you kill for $60,000?" I think the layers of scenes, flashbacks, although at times seemed to overlap, it provided time for my mind to ponder and grapple with the theme. I think the fragments and going back in the plot also raises the question of "if I could do it over, what might I do different?"
It was a bit slow because of what seemed repetition... but it was confronting, intense and thought provoking. My friend asked me after "what did you think? intense hey?" I replied "Do you reckon desperate times call for desperate measures? He replied "do you really reckon their situations were desperate?" Interesting question!
The other intensity was the nudity throughout and the explicit sex scene that opens the movie and pretty much smacks you in the face. My friend who I went with, he whispered to me "ohh this is a bit full on"... which at that point I didn't know how to respond so I just shrugged and kept watching! Don't think that was the best response at the time but still don't know what the best response would have been.
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Can I leave you with 2 questions:
- What would make you walk out of a movie? sex scene, boredom, drug taking, blasphemy...
- Desperate times calls for desperate measures... how do you get to the gospel from that?
2 comments:
I saw this movie last week. The opening scene was rather a bit "in your face". By the end of the movie, I understood the point of it, although I still don't think I needed to see the explicitness of it.
Anyway, I sat through the whole thing, so obviously I'm willing to put up with a fair bit (also, I saw American Gangster, which had everything covered - violence, sex, nudity, explicit drug usage...)
Getting to the gospel, what about regrets & repentance & guilt; living with the consequences of actions; as well as the fathers revenge, especially since there seemed to be no assistance to justice forthcoming from the police.
thanks Deb!
Where were you at the end of the movie... you do good at opening cans of gospel worms. ;)
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