Taylor Hackford's latest effort, "The Devil's Advocate," isn't a dreadful effort, but it could have been much better than it is. The premise is played for thrills--if there had been thought involved, we might have gotten perhaps a glimpse or two of consideration about whether a lawyer should go against his conscience in defending someone he believes to be guilty. Or, for that matter, whether anyone should uphold the standards of the profession regardless of moral compunctions. These are real questions, but it would take an entirely different film to address them--and Hackford did not, ironically, have many Bigger Issues in mind in making this.
The plot: Kevin Lomax, a young Florida lawyer (Keanu Reeves), is recruited by a prestigious New York firm, and he heads to the Big Apple with wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron) in tow, over the objections of a Bible-thumping mother (Judith Ivey). His success in winning cases continues, but only to serve as contrast to his wife's descent into madness and his own moral disintegration, as it turns out that the firm is involved in rather more than defending rich clients. And so it turns out that...
Stop a moment. Pretend that you don't know what the real twist is; pretend that the trailers didn't give it away. How much more interesting a movie might this have been if it had turned out that the firm was simply an ordinary one, representing rich clients who wanted to buy their way out of a conviction? It would be "The Firm" in New York, you say, but it wouldn't--at least, it wouldn't have to be. There's plenty of room for development along these lines: the cases that the lawyer gets handed get more and more questionable, until finally his conscience steps in and he says no. Firm: where's your conscience been up to now? Lawyer: well, maybe it should have been there all along. There are a variety of places it could go from there, some more interesting than others, but at a time when lawyer jokes are standard, perhaps that would have been a more noteworthy movie than this.
What we do get, as you no doubt know: the firm turns out to be operated by none other than ol' Scratch himself (Al Pacino), and the various partners and employees are a variety of demonic minions and henchmen. Mary Ann's deterioration is spurred along by her recognition of what's really going on--as illustrated by various characters' faces morphing between human and monster, well placed and very effective. Things spin way out of control, naturally, leading to a climactic bit of over-the-top monologue by Pacino--but by then, the horror element has taken over and all restrictions on realism are off, plotwise. Various twists ensue, none of them successful at bringing things back to this planet.
Where did this go wrong? One of the problems is that Reeves is supposed to be playing a character; it's one thing to let a plot take surreal twists, but it's quite another to have supposedly ordinary folks whose actions just aren't believable. True, there is exactly one role that Reeves can convey effectively--clueless surfer dude--and it isn't his fault if misguided directors keep calling him and shoving him into parts that don't involve saying "excellent" repeatedly. But he's so painfully ineffective that it's rarely clear what he wants to convey, or what his character is supposed to be thinking. Does he neglect his wife completely because he's self-centered? Obtuse? Stupid? It's hard to tell. This is, in other words, a remarkable bad performance by Reeves; ordinary bad performances present certain ideas to the audience ineptly, in ways that make the audience think, hey, may as well hold up a sign saying THIS IS WHAT I'M THINKING, but what Reeves manages here is a character with no discernible motivations at all. He's just there, and the plot goes on around him. The part might have been better written, perhaps, but with only one mode of delivery, Reeves isn't likely to take advantage of what's there. (Response to Pacino's question on whether he goes to church: "I guess I'm on parole for time served," in monotone. What is he? Joking? Bitter? Bemused? Rueful? The world may never know.)
Pacino is quite good, as usual--and, at one particularly memorable moment, he even makes fun of Reeves' clunky intonation. The guess here is that the screenplay called for him to make fun of the southern accent that Lomax is supposed to have, but the way that accent comes and goes--and the comic qualities of Reeves' voice even without a silly affectation--makes it even funnier. As John Milton, Beelzebub's disguise (my, my, literacy in Hollywood, will wonders never cease?), Pacino is appropriately smarmy and insinuating; as the real thing, veil down, he is mesmerizing, despite some gratuitous bits. (Lip-syncing to Frank Sinatra?) The contrast between the nuance of the lawyer persona-- only a leer here or a chuckle there suggest anything more sinister--and the sheer over-the-top force of the Devil with the chance to say everything that's on his mind is the best part of Pacino's performance.
Theron steals virtually every scene from Reeves--I would call it taking candy from a baby, but we've had enough Keanu- bashing already--and genuinely captivates even with not much to do besides go to pieces. (Her role is that of the ordinary person trapped in a horror movie, and she captures the audience's sympathy. Reeves, though his role is not so dissimilar, is not recognizable as an ordinary person.) Most of the visual shocks in the movie are hers--we see most of the shocking images at the same time she does--and her reactions are convincing enough that we care about what happens to her. If there is a downside to Theron's performance, it's that her baby-face beauty makes Keanu looking at other women rather improbable. (Plus, though it isn't her fault, Reeves hardly shows her any convincing affection, so it isn't clear why she'd be upset when he starts to neglect her.)
As noted, there is something of an identity crisis here, in that Hackford has the beginning of a moral drama going on and then lets it get all supernatural--in short, become a horror film. That's his right, of course, and it's not unprecedented for horror films to be less than fully logically realized--but there's a certain silliness in casting the Devil with no real acknowledgment of a supernatural counterpart. Ivey has little to do as the Bible-carrying mother who warns dolorously of the temptations of the city; it's such a caricature that the audience doesn't take her seriously. Her character is weak--and, even, shallow--to the point that we don't necessarily think she's sincere. And the only other character to acknowledge the existence of God is, naturally, Pacino, whose rant against God ("he's a SADist!") seem just a bit bizarre given that Reeves has never expressed any belief. Like, who you tryin' to convince, Al? The point is that the Devil is classically imagined as actually trying to steal souls; with no one to steal them from, the exercise feels a little dumb. All that was required was some implication that anyone in the movie was trying to do the right thing (ideally, out of some sense of relationship to God, but let's not get picky), and Pacino was twisting their motives or playing up their frailties to ensnare them. But Reeves has no apparent interest in the right thing. Again, the idea isn't necessarily that Hackford should have given God a fair shake, a chance to yell back at Pacino, merely that, since God's existence is presupposed, there should have been at least a scene or two that didn't paint that belief is silly and antiquated. A conflict between good and evil might have been compelling; when good wasn't allowed to show up, what was left became a tad uninvolving.
Despite the drawbacks, there are many memorable moments here, chief among them Theron's death; the blood on Reeves' shirt in the following scenes, underscoring what happens, is perhaps the best thing about his performance. The visuals are skillful--a sex scene where Theron is exchanged, in Reeves' mind, with another woman, a chilling dream sequence involving Theron and a baby--and genuinely jarring. If you can suspend disbelief sufficiently to enjoy the ride, give it a shot; if poorly realized characters bug you, skip it.
Duncan Stevens d-stevens@nwu.edu 312-654-0280
The room is as you left it; your last touch-- A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself As saintly--hallows now each simple thing, Hallows and glorifies, and glows between The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.
--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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