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The two stars in slick suits against an ominously red color scheme adorn this poster for Taylor Hackford's The Devil's Advocate
A young, hot Florida defense lawyer, Kevin Lomax has an uncanny knack for getting guilty a-holes off the hook. He now gets lured to New York by a major law firm there. Inattentive of his wife's growing mental problems as a result of the move, he rises to the stars in the firm with unusual speed and takes on a high-profile triple murder case for the firm's charismatic boss. But something isn't quite right.
The movie is adapted from a same-titled 1990 novel by Andrew Neiderman (In Double Jeopardy (1998)), stars Keanu Reeves (The Matrix (1999)) and Al Pacino (Heat (1995)) as the two leads and is directed by Taylor Hackford (Ray (2004)) as a fairly anonymous Hollywood mega-production.
It starts off well with an introductory pedophilia case involving a victimized Heather Matarazzo (Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)). It then builds slowly, as Lomax is warned against the sins of 'Babylon', - the Big Apple in this interpretation, - by his fervently religious mother, but decides to go there anyway.
SPOILER Pacino is
good as Satan himself for most of the film, playing off his macho
charms and energy, although his speeches get longer and longer, and by the
end, he is shouting most of his lines, and his charm ebbs out as a
result, while a painting comes to life lengthily in a terrible effect. It all ends ambiguously and uses a film student ploy to make its ends meet, which I didn't like. It seemed like its writers, Jonathan Lemkin (Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)) and Tony Gilroy (The Bourne Identity (2002)), had some difficulties with finishing the film, and that this was their best bet.
The Devil's Advocate does have quite a few good scenes, especially in its first two acts, as the rooftop scene, in which Lomax is introduced to and interviewed by his new employer, or some of the eerie scenes of his wife's (Charlize Theron (Tully (2018))) seeing 'things'. Rick Baker (Missing Link (1988)) has created some nightmarish, diabolical effects for the film.
The Devil's Advocate also has a very sexy Connie Nielsen (Gladiator (2000)) as a redhead drifting around the office and Jeffrey Jones (Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)) in another juicy office role. There's also a sex scene between Reeves and Theron/Nielsen that might excite some.
But in the end Advocate sits between chairs and never succeeds; partly law thriller, partly religious horror, its slow pace dissolves in a long third act that becomes flat out boring. I was almost certain the film was going to end somewhat anticlimactically after an empty city crane shot, but it turned out that it still had a good many scenes left. The pic is at least 20 minutes overlong but still nearly a good film.
Watch a clip from the film here
Budget: 57 mil. $
Box office: 152.9 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 2.68 times its cost)
[The Devil's Advocate premiered 13 October (California) and runs 144 minutes. Reeves turned down 11 mil. $ for Speed 2 in favor of a change of pace and 8 mil. $ for his performance in The Devil's Advocate, a pay cut reportedly necessitated by Pacino's higher salary demand. Shooting took place from October 1996 - February 1997 in Florida, New Jersey and New York. The film opened #2, behind I Know What You Did Last Summer, to a 12.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 6 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#3-#4-X-X-#3-#3-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-#3), grossing 60.9 mil. $ (39.8 % of the total gross.) Roger Ebert gave it a 2.5/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Hackford returned with Proof of Life (2000). Pacino returned in The Insider (1999); Reeves in The Matrix (1999). The Devil's Advocate is fresh at 63 % with a 6.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Devil's Advocate?
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