The two brothers are Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke). Andy is successful in real estate, has a great apartment and a beautiful wife, Gina (Marisa Tomei). He has the look of a fat cat. Hank, meanwhile, is divorced, behind on his child support payments and is such an obvious loser that we know disaster is looming when his older brother convinces him to commit to a crime.

Naturally, something does go wrong, and the movie - directed by Sidney Lumet and written by newcomer Kelly Masterson - examines the mess from every angle, flashing backwards in time and varying the perspectives, until we piece together who knew what when. The cool thing is, we're still kind of clueless. In movies like this, that come with an ironic air of detachment and a quietly purring mastermind like Hoffman's Andy, we expect someone to turn up in South America with a suitcase of money, but how they'd get there seems unfathomable.

Lumet's direction is just as sharp as you'd expect from a seasoned veteran - he turned 83 this year (wow) - but the movie's energy is positively youthful. He's always had a thing for stories about desperation and loss of control (think "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Verdict" and "The Morning After"), so it's no wonder he was attracted to this story.