The Devil's Advocate

Well today I’m going to look at a really crazy movie, “The Devil’s Advocate,” released in 1997. Janet Maslin started her review by saying, “Meet Faust in fancy cowboy boots: Kevin Lomax, the lawyer played by Keanu Reeves in Taylor Hackford's unexpectedly seductive ''Devil's Advocate.''” Kevin is at the final stretch of his high-concept case (Maslin goes on to say, “Slick yuppie is co-opted by slicker New York Satan”) that has been turned into a generous-looking, brilliantly entertaining ethics play with the shadows of “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Wall Street” and a handful of other movies of selling out to Manhattan’s excitements.

This time it’s Satan as the big boss at a law firm, with Al Pacino having great, clever fun with the screenplay’s witticism. “Look at me, underestimated from Day One!” shouts this executive, who has an interest for fashionably stylish black. “You’d never think I was Master of the Universe, now wouldya?”

His idea of such control definitely surpasses Tom Wolfe’s.

With an enjoyably light touch, the screenplay by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy (adapted from a novel by Andrew Neiderman) names Pacino’s character John Milton, because he knows a few things about Paradise Lost. The movie takes place in Gainesville, FL, and they first find the determined Kevin, who thinks he has a lot to learn. Kevin, played by the actor who is the exact same character in each movie, Keanu Reeves, as a smart and charming hotshot, is first seen successfully defending a nasty schoolteacher (Chris Bauer) against a case of mistreating a student (Heather Matarazzo from the sitcom “Now and Again”). Then, with his gorgeous and hot wife, Mary Ann, played by Charlize Theron, he celebrates this undecided victory. High on his own career path, Kevin is in the mood to say yes when a lawyer offers a huge check and tries attracting him to Manhattan.

The firm that calls Kevin has business in places like the Middle East, the Balkans, Central America and West Africa. It has a receptionist named Caprice. It has a drop dead beautiful temptress called Christabella, played by Connie Nielsen. Also, it has the monstrously modest penthouse home of Milton, complete with Purgatory paintings and a big roaring fire. Maslin commented, “Bruno Rubeo's deft production design, handsomely photographed by Andrzej Bartkowiak with the same burnished look he has given many Sidney Lumet films, gives this place a stark minimalism that is one part sleek efficiency, one part torture chamber.” Running water flowing off the open edge of a terrace is one of the film’s many ways of suggesting souls on the edge.

The Lomaxes are given a huge apartment and Mary Ann stays home the way Rosemary did, painting the place while Kevin exceeds in his lawyer career. Meanwhile, Kevin stays busy and becomes highly persuaded by the cases that are given to him. One involves Delroy Lindo as a strange figure accused of sacrificing goats in his ghetto basement. Another has Craig T. Nelson as a developer living in a Trump-like, flying splendor. The film’s more harmful tricks include using Donald Trump’s real apartment as a set, since Versailles was perhaps unbelievable and making Senator Alfonso D’Amato at a party scene for Satan’s law firm.

Meanwhile, Mary Ann starts having problems. She misses Kevin. She is followed by Milton, who talks her into doing something dull to her beautiful blonde hair. She receives the same amount of unhelpful decorating advice from neighboring corporate wives (Tamara Tunie and Pamela Gray) and discards her favorite color, though Mary Ann’s bright green appears sadly in a later hospital scene. During one outing with these women, complete with shopping, chardonnay and talk of plastic surgery, Mary Ann suddenly sees a horrifying vision.

I agree with Maslin when she said, “The film uses morphing and Rick Baker's monster effects strikingly, but it also keeps its gimmicks well tethered to reality: an afternoon like Mary Ann's might be enough to make anyone see demons.” Later, Kevin’s drifting eye gives in an uncomfortable love scene where two different women in his life are suddenly made impossible to tell apart. Maslin said, “Mr. Hackford uses diabolical editing at strategic moments to confuse identities in this way.” Even though there isn’t small irony in a huge Hollywood film’s finger-waving about the temptation of wealth and power, “The Devil’s Advocate” does avoid awkward moralistic and old-fashioned ideas of good and evil. Maslin notes, “It helps that Kevin is no naif, and that his churchgoing Mama (Judith Ivey) sees Manhattan as ''a dwelling place of demons'' well before that perception becomes unavoidable. It helps that the film finds Faustian deal making and yuppie ambition not very different.” What also helps is that here, the final lawyer joke in the movie, it becomes very clear why Kevin’s legal talents are Satan’s tools of choice. Pacino’s ill-behaved Milton eventually says that nobody on Earth could do his command better than a well-trained group of attorneys. If those attorneys are as treated as Kevin threatens to become, so much the better. As Milton likes to point out, “Vanity is definitely my favorite sin.”

A few semesters ago when I was in college, I took a class where we read some of Milton’s work, most notably Paradise Lost. If you have a college course where it’s titled “Milton,” the class has to include Paradise Lost, since that’s his most famous work, and you have to read it. It’s a good book, and I recommend you read it. As for this movie, if you want to watch it, do so, but be careful because it’s really crazy. Not to say that it’s not good, it’s a good movie, but really insane. Watch the movie if you want to know what I mean. Just be careful when watching it and always brace yourself. If you have read Paradise Lost, then you'll probably be able to point out the references this movie has to the book.

Look out this Friday for the next installment in “Al Pacino Month.”