This is how it works, I think: once you finally accept your Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, you've entered into an unspoken agreement to climb aboard the first available ice floe, set yourself on fire, and drift off into Hollywood oblivion. Director Sidney Lumet got his consolation Oscar in 2005 after five winless nominations over five decades of filmmaking, but - and with deep apologies to Dylan Thomas - instead of going gentle into that good night, the 83-year-old Lumet rages once again with "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," a crackling heist noir draped in the tormented shroud of Greek tragedy.

He made an auspicious helming debut with 1957's "12 Angry Men," yet Lumet is downright revered for his startling run during the mid ‘70s, with milestones like "Serpico," "Dog Day Afternoon," and "Network" all released within a four-year span and cementing his well-deserved reputation as an actor's director. And though his output since then, from 1982's Oscar-nominated "The Verdict" to 1999's needless remake of Cassavetes' "Gloria," has been of varying merit, "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" lets Lumet turn back the clock to a time when filmmakers served the stories rather than their egos (we need not name the current scofflaws) and at a time when his contemporaries - I'm thinking Altman, Bergman, Antonioni - have all recently joined that big Directors' Guild in the sky.

Lumet likely knows that no one wants to watch Philip Seymour Hoffman having sex, but fade in and there he is in all his squishy glory, sticking it to Marisa Tomei from behind. The Oscar winners (you forgot she had one, didn't you?) play Andy and Gina, a couple whose seemingly innocent pillow talk will set the plot into motion. He needs money (for reasons that take their sweet time in becoming clear) and he knows where to get it. Twitchy little brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) is also on board for the thievery, his financial woes taking the form of unpaid child support (Amy Ryan from "Gone Baby Gone" is his ex). "It's a victimless crime in case your faggoty little conscience bothers you," Andy bullies Hank, who tries to back out once he realizes just whose parents own the particular mom-and-pop operation Andy plans to knock over.

First-time screenwriter Kelly Masterson forgoes the linear narrative, instead opting for a more complex structure - a la "Pulp Fiction" or "Go" - that plays fast and loose with both time and point of view, challenging us to piece things together for ourselves. When the robbery, of course, goes sickeningly wrong, the camera begins focusing on the great Albert Finney (he channeled Poirot for Lumet 30 years ago in "Murder on the Orient Express") as jewelry-store owner Charles, his face twisted into slack-jawed agony as he copes with overwhelming loss, police indifference, and how his own failings as a father may have played a role in the appalling events.

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that this is Philip Seymour Hoffman's show. A leading man with the ordinary looks and extraordinary versatility of a character actor, he somehow renders the cold, despicable Andy a nonetheless sympathetic figure, whether he's holding his own with the eternally formidable Finney during that gut-wrenching backyard two-shot or throwing the calmest tantrum ever. What is shocking, however, is the out-of-left-field brilliance of Ethan Hawke (let's please admit that "Training Day" nomination was totally silly). He contorts his eager-pup cuteness into the scummy, emasculated, and heartbroken Hank, the baby of the family vainly trying to swap his fading adorability for adult respect, yet in far over his head.

Accented by a mournful score that's instantly recognizable as being by longtime Coen brothers collaborator Carter Burwell, Lumet's lengthy takes allow his actors to both act and, refreshingly, react, the scenes often punctuated by jarring transitions with the rhythm of a strobe light. "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" is deceptively simple filmmaking, right down to the settings, which careen from suburban strip mall to downtown high-rise, as well as the Everyman qualities of all the players. The most interesting films put the viewer in what-would-I-do? mode, and these losers might easily be us, if we were pushed to their desperate limits. "The world is an evil place," one ancient pawnbroker observes late in the film. "Some of us make money off of that. And others get destroyed." 

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

(R), directed by Sidney Lumet

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