The Devil's Advocate (1997)
Grade: A-
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, Charlize Theron, Craig T. Nelson, and Connie Nielson
Director: Taylor Hackford
Rated R for language, violence, sex, nudity, disturbing images, and thematic/adult element


"The Devil's Advocate" is a fantastic, devilishly entertaining (no pun intended) exercise in pure camp, albeit one that is a little less campy than some have said; until the busy finale, it has more than one thing in common with the unsettlingly uneventful but always scary 1968 thriller "Rosemary’s Baby." It is trash, but it’s visually polished trash (if ever a room deserved an Oscar, it was here) with some bitchin’ acting and killer third-act twists. Despite being mentally groomed to like “better” films, here I can expel my accelerating snobbishness regarding the world of film; this film technically sucks on all levels but is really the highest form of cinematic candy.

Kevin Lomax is a small-time attorney in Florida (and he’s played by Keanu Reeves—“Whoa, dude, objection!”) whose record in court is 64-0—he’s never lost a case. Plus, he’s married to a beautiful woman, Mary Ann (Charlize Theron). An offer follows his most recent victory, and he is invited to New York and hired to a powerful law firm headed by John Milton (Al Pacino). He becomes much richer, but also more obsessed with his job and Mary Ann starts seeing demonic visions (these include, in one of the film’s least subtle shots, the gratuitous image of a nude baby playing with intestines, but I digress) and losing her sanity. Lomax clearly has the chance (as sympathetically presented by Milton) to drop a case—it involves a powerful man (Craig T. Nelson) up for murder—and tend to his sick-in-the-head wife, but he refuses and decides to work the case first and then take some time off. The plot then spirals out of control as Mary Ann’s condition gets worse and the possibility that Milton is the devil—yes, Satan himself—appears.

The finale is an orgy (well, at one point literally) of revelations in which the plot twists so much it appears to be a pretzel crafted by the hands of a very generous factory worker, but that’s half the fun, because "The Devil's Advocate" doesn’t visibly cheat, and the twists (outside the rather obvious one that Milton is Satan) aren’t really easy to spot prior to their unmasking.

"The Devil's Advocate" is directed by Taylor Hackford; the only one of his films I’ve seen is "Proof of Life," and I wasn’t much impressed by it. However, here he shows he can make a really good movie, beautifully positioning perfectly hammy actors in front of wonderful sets as they spew great one-liners. He does as good a job as anyone could do with the material.

And then there’s the acting. A god in cinema, Al Pacino is one of the showiest actors around, and when he finally reveals his character’s secret he does it with such a fantastic over-the-top nonchalance (Lomax: “…You’re—the Antichrist!” Milton: [Pause] “Whatever.”) nothing about his aforementioned god status is in question. Keanu Reeves surprised the hell out of me—he was actually good—not great or anything, but I truly believed he was in the situations the film put him in. There was occasional genuine emotion, although the one scene that rings false is when he has to cry. Now the best performance in the whole movie comes from completely out of nowhere: Charlize Theron as the wife. She puts her heart, soul, and naked body into this performance, and the result is a portrait of a terrified wife; the film is not really scary so much as fun, but when she sees her visions and we see Theron’s reaction, we’re pretty scared and not having much fun. She lights up the screen.

So what more must I say about "The Devil's Advocate?" It gets all the small things right too—I’ve already mentioned the art direction, but it’s also got a great score and an awesome use of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” over the closing credits (great song anyway; especially fitting of the film’s last couple seconds). And how could I forget the nudity? With scenes like this in such a cool flick, who needs porn? Here you get Al Pacino and the boobies, and you don’t have to see Al naked.


-Alex, June 2002