'Fred Claus' and 'Devil' have sibling rivalry, memories at their core

By Michael Sragow | Sun Movie Critic

November 9, 2007

Sibling rivalry replaces the romantic triangle as the pop-culture mainstay in the week's most-hyped openings - a botched Yuletide comedy and a deliberately excruciating thriller.

In each, a roly-poly brother who appears to have his life and career under control ropes his scrawnier, seedier sibling into an insane enterprise that threatens to go kaput long before the final curtain.

The glitzy North Pole farce Fred Claus, starring Vince Vaughn in the title role of Santa Claus' ne'er-do-well brother (and Paul Giamatti as St. Nick), could have been called Freud Claus. It's all hung up on childhood experience determining adult behavior. When Santa agrees to lend Fred the money to open an off-track betting office in Chicago - if Fred helps with the holiday rush up in the Arctic - all heck breaks loose. Fred even gets the elves dancing funky.

The sordid New York heist-and-murder melodrama Before the Devil Knows You're Dead features Philip Seymour Hoffman as an overweight would-be criminal mastermind who ropes his alimony-poor brother, Ethan Hawke, into trying to stick up a mom-and-pop jewelry store owned by their own mom and pop (Rosemary Harris and Albert Finney).

Whether in the Windy City or Manhattan or Holiday Central way up North, the underlying comedy and drama amount to "Mom always liked you best" or "Dad bullied me the most."

The best part of each film is the dark-haired, flashing-eyed beauty who realizes these guys are crazy: Rachel Weisz as a meter-maid from London in Fred Claus and Marisa Tomei as Hoffman's wife and Hawke's lover in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Only one film, of course, ends happily ever after, but the movie that's naughtier morally, Devil, is at least a lot nicer aesthetically.

Apart from an overall lack of spontaneous fun and inspiration, the problem with Fred Claus is that even before one of the Claus brothers goes all over the globe to deliver at least a single gift to every child, the storytelling and focus are all over the map. The moviemakers keep pounding on the note of sibling rivalry. But the action hinges on an efficiency expert (Kevin Spacey) from some mysterious and never-explained agency (he also governs the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny) who threatens to close down Santa for running a loose operation. Nothing is looser than this movie's construction.

Is there anything more pathetic than a movie that will do anything for a laugh or a tear that doesn't get any laughs or tears? The film throws in a wizened yet winsome elf (John Michael Higgins) who's hopelessly in love with Santa's right-hand gal (Elizabeth Banks) and Fred's healing friendship with a neighbor boy who's in need of a loving family (Bobb'e J. Thompson).

Fred Claus overflows with would-be empowering messages about achieving self-respect and avoiding labeling as losers, late bloomers and problem children. Too bad the film's good intentions land with a thud amid the beribboned and belabored slapstick spectacle. Against all odds, Giamatti is superb as a warm and canny Santa Claus. He brings his nothing lines a unique shrewd tenderness that transforms them into enticing musings. And Weisz carries her zest for performing into the minuscule role of the feisty, good-humored girl who Fred must win to prove his worth to the audience as well as to Mama Claus. She's got earthiness, grace, giddiness and gumption. Without giving anything away, let's just say that if Fred Claus leaves movie-lovers with nothing else, it does at least give us the sight of Weisz over-the-moon-elated in Paris.

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead is supposed to be a killer title. I beg to differ. The quote comes from the Irish toast, "May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead." But the characters in this movie are so godless and limited all they want is some quality time on a cushy part of the planet - and if any deity earns their trust, it's the devil. Near the beginning we see a jewelry-store heist go wrong in a suburban shopping plaza; the rest of the movie uncovers the roots of the disaster in manic, makeshift marriages and careers.

Hoffman and Hawke, dysfunctional siblings in a family that's gone way beyond dysfunction, hope to solve their money shortfalls and assuage their existential panic with a victimless crime. They think they know their parents' comings and goings well enough to avoid detection or bloodshed; they bank on the store insurance covering the losses from their pitiful grand larceny. Naturally, they rack up more bloody bodies than Macbeth. Hoffman's Andy seems shrewd, tough and clearheaded; Hawke's Hank is over-emotional and out-of-his-depth. But they share more than they know - including, as their bedmate, Andy's voluptuous wife, Gina (Tomei). Their father may be a legitimate jeweler and solid husband and provider, but he's also the kind of dad who decries Hank as a weakling and puts down Andy by saying he knew the boy tried to do his best. (Finney is at his glazed-hammiest; the film is not this glorious Brit's finest two hours.)

Every move the brothers make is a veiled cry for consolation or respect. The rare time Andy makes love to Gina, he looks in the mirror: He checks out his own sexual performance and seals it in his memory. It's one of Hoffman's many master-actor touches in this movie. Hawke is nearly as good as a man who seems to jump out of his own skin even when he's standing still. He may strike out with Finney, but the director, Sidney Lumet, creates just the right atmosphere for his younger performers. With her ripe abandon and unobtrusive skill, Tomei creates a shallow creature yearning for affection and aghast at her marital mess.

Think of the existential hell of Sartre's No Exit as a nuclear family in meltdown and you get the peculiar comic horror of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. But the movie isn't laugh-out-loud funny. It's brutal and punishing, the psychological equivalent of a torture film, with Hoffman's Andy as the self-destructive homicidal mastermind. He says he feels that he's living a life made of mismatched parts. Ultimately, the only way he can fuse those parts is to knock off every other dangerous, heartless character in his path - and in Lumet's Manhattan, that's plenty.

On the negative side, the film's tricky chronology-jumping structure mostly just adds 20 minutes to the running time. On the positive side, the movie is consistent: Its lowdown view of human behavior sees the bargain-basement instincts in suburban colonials and New York walk-ups or high-rises. Kelly Masterson's script, though, lacks any transcendent dimension of extravagant emotion or even horror. The result is not a first-class film noir but a top-grade acting class. You admire it without enjoying it.

Still, let's give Devil its due: The ensemble goes so far into their roles that you feel their sweat through your own pores. And it proves that if you really bear down on the theme of siblings at odds, there's no melodramatic engine more potent than brotherly love-hate.

>>> Fred Claus (Warner Bros.) Starring Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Rachel Weisz. Directed by David Dobkin. Rated PG. Time 114 minutes.

>>>Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (THINKfilm) Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney. Rated R. Time 123 minutes.

michael.sragow@baltsun.com