Cain and unable
is an excellent specimen of the "fucked-up robbery" genre: brothers Andy (the schemer) and Hank (the fuck-up) plot to knock off their parents' jewelry store in Westchester, reasoning that they know the place inside and out, and insurance will take care of mom and dad's losses, so what could go wrong? Everything, of course: their mother gets shot in the course of the botched stick-up, and they don't see a thin dime from the score. The best part of this movie is the performances: Sidney Lumet is an actor's director, and this is an actor's film, dominated by towering contributions from Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the self-destructive, self-loathing Andy and Albert Finney as father Charles, a man who seems to wear every emotion as a thin concealment for his rage. Also in fine form is Ethan Hawke, who, in his advancing age, has wisely decided to treat his roles as exaggerations of his public persona: his Hank is a pathetic deadbeat who can't even make his child support payments and fucks his brother's wife (Marissa Tomei, who has spent the decade quietly resurrecting her career with niche parts in movies like
In the Bedroom and the underseen
Factotum) - a grim comment, perhaps, on the iconic self-regarding slackers upon which Hawke built his reputation in the 1990s. Though there is much bloodshed - like fellow '70s maverick Scorsese with late-period triumph
The Departed, Lumet turns the final act of his film into the Grand Guignol - owing to its brilliant performers the most blistering violence in
Devil is emotional, the lion's share of it self-directed; one is left to wonder if this family wouldn't have torn itself apart regardless of the artless deception at the film's core.
Cain and unable
