Editor’s Note: This film opens Friday night at Cine on Washington Street.

Sidney Lumet is no longer MIA. With “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” the 83-year-old legendary director proves he can do more than just slurp Jell-O and concentrate on not breaking a hip.

Thanks in large part to Quentin Tarantino, no genre has become more cliché than the botched heist film. However, Lumet pushes aside his walker to revive that which has become uninspired and a career hiatus rivaling Francis Ford Coppola.

On the surface, “Devil” may sound no different than the string of heist flicks that try to mask human interest with style.

Brothers Andy and Hank (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke) both are in need of money. Andy’s about to lose his trophy wife, played by Marisa Tomei (who must have been carbon frozen, because she hasn’t aged a bit in the last decade).

Hank’s behind on child support payments. So he bites when Andy comes to him with the prospect of a perfect and victimless crime in which they knock over a mom-and-pop jewelry store.

And we all know how those perfect crimes go.

To tell you any more plot details would be criminal, considering Lumet’s mastery of giving the audience as little as possible until absolutely necessary.

Like Tarantino, he tells the story in a nonlinear fashion, which allows the seemingly trivial to carry significance when explored from a different perspective. However, unlike the aforementioned director, Lumet’s yarn cannot be accused of over-stylization.

Each character spews desperation in hopes of maintaining a previous level of comfort, and because of such, they seem believable even as their actions border on the absurd.

Lumet is no stranger to corruption. He has tackled the themes before – in the police force with “Serpico” and the chase for television ratings in his masterpiece, “Network.”

It’s only natural he would turn to fraud in that which intertwines everything in our society – family – and more specifically, whether such can survive when its foundation is solely rooted in a continual pursuit of capitalist virtues.

It’s a classic tale of how the desire to protect one’s notion of family can lead to its undoing.

As the film wanes toward Greek tragedy-like proportions, Lumet turns to Hoffman, who is shedding his label as a character actor, to anchor the film with a slowly-ticking ferocity.

So, Lumet has proven the previously unconfirmed. He is not yet dead.

At least not as of press time.