OWEN'S BESTS
2. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Ordinary people doing very bad things: That's as good a hook as the movies have ever come up with. In Sidney Lumet's electrifying thriller, those ordinary people — Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke as brothers who knock off their parents' hole-in-the-mall jewelry store — have a deep, squirmy humanity recognizable enough to make you shudder. As the things they do slide from bad to worse, we're caught in the grip of crime that is all too real, of sin that spins out of control and comes bouncing back with karmic shock. In this family-demons film noir, which Lumet directed (from Kelly Masterson's potent script) at the astonishing age of 82, it's clearer than ever that the Lumet energy is really the fever of his characters. No movie this year was more darkly, excitingly alive.

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