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movie review - Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2009.06.03

This is a tough story about two fuck-up brothers who decide to rob their parents' jewelry store. Things go wrong and their accomplice kills their mother. We see a lot of the family dynamic that led one brother to be a junkie with a failing marriage and a corroding soul, and the other to be a divorced barfly adrift. That family story is what drives this thing along, and I thought it felt quite genuine. The pacing is great, the acting is uniformly great, and there are some very memorable scenes along the way.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

life's too short to use shitty pens

—Ken Werneburg, slack chat 2021