The Current Cinema  Bad Relations   (page 2)  In Sidney Lumet’s
furious and entertaining little morality play, “Before the Devil
Knows You’re Dead,” two men hard up for cash—Andy (Philip
Seymour Hoffman), a payroll manager at a Manhattan real-estate
company, and Hank (Ethan Hawke), his dim-witted kid
brother—decide to knock over a jewelry store in Westchester.
They know the store’s layout; they know how much value in
diamonds and cash is likely to be sitting there on a Saturday
morning. How could they not know? The store belongs to their
parents. But there’s no downside, Andy says. An elderly friend
of their mother’s will be tending the store that morning, and,
after the robbery, the boys will fence the jewels, and their
parents’ losses will be made good by an insurance company. We
already know, however, that none of this will happen as Andy
says—that the robbery will be a disaster—because the bungled job
is shown near the beginning of the movie, and the planning
session is a flashback. Lumet, working with th