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Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Lumet directs the script with the actor-centered efficiency that has served him well over a surprising array of projects. Read more
Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times: Watching this impeccably crafted melodrama, you feel grateful for a veteran filmmaker who serves a gripping story with a confident efficiency that's lean, mean and focused like a laser. Read more
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: This ambitious and well-directed crime thriller, with an intricate flashback structure redolent of Reservoir Dogs, gives Philip Seymour Hoffman a fascinatingly ambiguous character to work with. Read more
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Mr. Lumet has forgotten nothing, and still knows more than almost anyone about the elusive art of directing actors. Read more
Noel Murray, AV Club: Lumet tackles this material like an old master, finding scenes to settle into and hanging out there longer than a younger director might. Read more
Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is often an uncomfortable film to sit through, but the rewards it offers make it well worth the effort. Read more
Ty Burr, Boston Globe: There's no larger message other than that greed gives us something to hold on to even as it kills us. Read more
Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: This is no nostalgia trip taken by an 83-year-old director. It's a fierce, hot slap of a movie, a shameless melodrama with bite. Read more
Tom Long, Detroit News: What a movie. What a director. Read more
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Proof that Sidney Lumet's talent is, in every sense, timeless. Read more
Jonathan F. Richards, Film.com: As the Shadow used to say, the weed of crime bears bitter fruit, and Lumet has made a delicious pie out of it. Read more
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: If God is in the obvious details, Devil is in the ones you might tragically overlook. Read more
Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: You feel Before the Devil Knows You're Dead more than you watch it. And the feeling is far from warm and fuzzy. Read more
Jan Stuart, Newsday: Family, and the core ideals that hold them in place, are blown to smithereens by the robbery at the ravaged heart of Sidney Lumet's scalding new thriller. Read more
David Denby, New Yorker: [A] furious and entertaining little morality play. Read more
David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: [Sidney Lumet's] touch in Before the Devil is so sure, so perfectly weighted, that it's hard to imagine him capable of making a bad movie. Read more
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: As deliberately provocative and in-your-face ugly as this film is, it still plays as second-rate Tarantino instead of first-rate Lumet. Read more
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: [Lumet] proves that at 83 he's still the master of the game. Read more
Lou Lumenick, New York Post: This flick is fast and ferocious, [Lumet's] sharpest and best since Prince of the City -- and surely one of the year's finest. Read more
Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: The 83-year-old Mr. Lumet, who has handled such immortals as Brando and Magnani in his career, expertly extracts individually charismatic performances from Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Hawke, Mr. Finney, Ms. Harris and Ms. Tomei. Read more
Rex Reed, New York Observer: A botched-heist thriller with labyrinthine plot twists, suspenseful character revelations and out-of-sequence narrative elements befitting a grand opera mounted on a massive scale. Read more
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: [Lumet's] best film since 1982's The Verdict. Read more
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Lumet's film is a stunner. Read more
James Berardinelli, ReelViews: This is not classic Sidney Lumet, but it's ample evidence that after more than 40 years working in this business, the director is still capable of crafting an entertaining and thought provoking motion picture. Read more
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is such a superb crime melodrama that I almost want to leave it at that. To just stop writing right now and advise you to go out and see it as soon as you can. Read more
Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: What you see in it says more about you than it says about Lumet and his straightforward, throwback-style entertainment, which is richly played and dazzlingly blinged up with sex and drugs, but virtually devoid of human insight or narrative ambition. Read more
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: An invigorating, refreshing and unusual thing to see one done so expertly. Read more
Dana Stevens, Slate: It revisits [Dog Day Afternoon's] claustrophobic suspense and deep compassion for its characters -- abject, grasping everymen who truly believe they're only one act of violence away from everything they've ever wanted. Read more
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The family dynamics are skillfully rendered, the suspense is bruising and each man's performance is a revelation. Read more
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: The problem is not that the director is working but that his latest film is working too hard. Way too hard a" this thing is melodrama running a marathon. Read more
Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: At a time when family movies are usurped by fantasies of sentimental feelgood, Lumet's latest -- the mangled-heist melodrama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead -- delivers a swift kick straight to the jewels. Read more
Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: I think you'll laugh a lot at what [Lumet] has wrought here -- but only well after the movie is over and the full scale of its perversity settles into your bones. Read more
David Fear, Time Out: The movie, however, belongs to Lumet: The fact that he's produced such a vital work as an octogenarian is amazing enough, but the way this tragedy unfolds without a single false move puts the film among the best work of a very prestigious career. Read more
Christopher Orr, The New Republic: The movie's title comes from the Irish toast, 'May you be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you're dead.' Unfortunately, everyone in the film is running about 35 minutes late. Read more
Lisa Nesselson, Variety: ...the wrenching tale has something for anyone who likes their melodrama spiked with palpable tension and genuine suspense. Read more
J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Three years after being presented a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, the 83-year-old director comes forth with a violent family melodrama that is his strongest movie in at least two decades. Read more
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: In addition to being a study in great acting, this is a study in great directing. Filming with high-definition digital video cameras, Lumet weaves in and out of the action, proving to be as adroit with new technology as he was with old-school celluloid. Read more