# Devil's Advocate, The (1997)

### reviewed by
Curtis Edmonds

by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org

Imagine a movie with this premise: After years of struggling with his private law practice, a young Southern lawyer gets an opportunity to work for a large New York law firm. The work is absorbing, he feels the need to prove himself to his partners, he likes the money -- so he spends more and more time at work. His wife, on the other hand, hates New York, hates leaving her family and friends back home, hates the people her husband works for and the New York social scene in which she feels pressured to participate. As her husband becomes more and more engrossed in his job, she sees less and less of him and becomes lonely, isolated and depressed.

The husband is handed the case all of New York is talking about, a triple homicide committed by a wealthy and evil real estate developer. As the evidence against his client mounts, however, the lawyer's wife begins to deteriorate. She begins to have hallucinations -- specifically, that the people her husband works with are possessed by demons. The lawyer must choose between the fame and fortune that will come if he gets his wealthy, guilty client acquitted or dealing with his wife's fragile mental health -- and then is forced to watch as his choice goes tragically wrong.

Sounds like a great movie, doesn't it? And it almost got made, too.

Unfortunately, this is not the movie we're reviewing today. What we have is The Devil's Advocate, starring Al Pacino as the Devil. Pacino is the senior partner at the New York law firm of the aforementioned young lawyer (Keanu Reeves), and is trying to use the power of a high-dollar silk-suit New York law firm to wreck the world. (Not a bad choice of tools, either.)

Reeves still can't act, and is not at all believable as a slick young lawyer -- and especially not as a slick Southern lawyer (he never masters the accent). Let's not talk about him. The heart of this movie is two great performances, one from Pacino as Satan, and Charlzie Theron as Reeves's neglected wife. Both actors do a fine job -- however, their hard work is ultimately wasted because somebody thought it would be a good idea to put them both in the same movie.

Pacino is good in this movie because Pacino is good, period. In the climactic scene, where Pacino is revealed to be Lord of Hell, Pacino gives a screaming, ranting polemic against God. And he does such a good job, and is so effective in the role, that it's not until after the movie that you realize that what he's saying didn't make a word of sense. (I felt the same way about his rant at the end of Scent of a Woman as well, if that tells you anything.) Pacino isn't the best screen Devil -- that would be Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick, in my opinion -- but he's enjoying himself, he's a pro, and ultimately, he's Al Pacino.

If Pacino is just living up to our high expectations, Theron surpasses them. We first see her as a Southern party girl, drinking, dancing and romancing with her lawyer husband. Later we see her as abandoned and alone in an eight-bedroom apartment... and still later, heading down the slippery slope to madness. She goes from being completely superficial and annoying to being heartbreakingly tragic in the course of this movie. It's an impressive performance in a very well-written part.

What makes The Devil's Advocate a flat failure is that it cheapens Theron's performance. By placing the blame for her collapse on Pacino's diabolical schemes and manipulation instead of on Reeves, the filmmakers have turned a potentially decent tragedy into a theater-of-the-absurd black comedy. There's a wonderful, haunting shot of Keanu Reeves silently wandering down a digitally emptied New York street that should have been the last shot in the movie. Instead, it's just a segue into the final supernatural confrontation with the Devil that's nothing more than an excuse for Pacino to chew the scenery.

It's a shame that a really good performance by Theron, a really good premise, and a really good town like New York (which looks wonderful) gets wasted in a dumb, useless, John Grisham wannabe movie like this. I suppose the filmmakers could say that "the devil made us do it", but I doubt that he needed the help.

    Rating:  C+

    --
    Curtis Edmonds
    blueduck@hsbr.org

The Hollywood Stock Brokerage and Resource Your Guide to the Hollywood Stock Exchange http://www.hsbr.org/brokers/blueduck/

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