Review: Morality tale ‘The Devil You Know’ asks, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’

Four adult brothers are at the center of “The Devil You Know,” an efficient and well-acted family drama with the overlay of a modern morality tale: Marcus (Omar Epps), Anthony (Curtiss Cook), Drew (William Catlett) and Terry Cowans (Vaughn W. Hebron).

But the story, written and directed by Charles Murray – an executive producer and writer of Netflix’s “Luke Cage,” the gritty urban superhero series – focuses on the fraught dynamic between two of them: Marcus, a recovering alcoholic and felon who is getting back on his feet with a new job, and Drew, who has just lost his job and appears to be implicated in the brutal home invasion, robbery, double murder and beating that open the film.

Michael Ealy plays the dogged detective investigating the case, but this is no police procedural. It’s as if Marcus and Drew have traded places, as Drew observes. And Marcus is torn between turning police informant – sharing what he knows of Drew’s potential involvement with a police tip line – and shielding his younger brother.

To snitch or not to snitch, in other words, is the question. And to what end? Are Marcus’s instincts punitive, protective or something else? As Drew notes, sarcastically, Marcus seems to have grown a conscience since finding sobriety. No, Marcus tells him: It’s prison that gave him a conscience; being sober means he has to live with that conscience.

The screenplay is thoughtful and nuanced, and Epps’s performance anchors the narrative with a solid, unfussy portrayal of ethical indecision even if the third act detours into more melodramatic territory. One of the film’s villains, played by Theo Rossi of “Luke Cage,” brings the same cartoonish energy he brought to that show, but it’s not quite enough to derail “Devil.”

There’s an open-ended ambiguity to the film’s resolution that doesn’t fully satisfy, but maybe that’s life: There are no happy endings or pat lessons sometimes, this story seems to say. And some people have to learn that the hard way.