The Devil's Own (1997) A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp (C) 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Not as contrived as it might have sounded, this drama uses Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford to good effect in a story that works emotionally despite slight lapses of logic.
I had been led to believe that THE DEVIL'S OWN was a ridiculous botch of a movie, mostly no thanks to a number of severely negative reviews that focused in on the trouble-riddled production of the movie; apparently, Ford and Pitt were lured into the movie with a script that was reworked significantly during preproduction. I gritted my teeth and checked it out anyway. To my surprise, THE DEVIL'S OWN turned out to be a good movie -- not a towering success, but an effective and remarkably intelligent film about two ethics in collision.
Brad Pitt plays a young man who entered the IRA at an early age, after his father was killed in front of his eyes by masked gunmen. In a police raid, he kills a number of British police and soldiers, but manages to escape, and makes his way to the United States under the wings of a judge who specializes in "assisting" IRA members. Pitt's character is out to snare a cache of Stinger missiles and return home. Ford plays the Irish cop who Pitt's character is provided a place to stay with.
The movie strives for emotional authenticity and gets it right most of the time. The early scenes with Ford's character's family, for instance, are right on the nose. Ford's character has had three daughters and no sons, and an emotional bond forms between him and Pitt's character. Also, the cop's partner is explored in a subplot which comments strongly on the cop's ethics: He hates the fact that the world drives you to do terrible things in the name of so-called higher goods which are mutable. And this, of course, will put him directly in Pitt's character's path.
There are some moments where logic is strained, but the movie never strikes a wrong note emotionally. That's where it works best, when it tests the heartstrings of everyone involved and sees what happens. Pitt's character respects the cop's integrity, but he is, after all, a soldier in a war, and cannot simply drop everything and retire. There's also some violence, but no more than needed to move the story forward: there is an exchange of gunplay at the very end, for instance, but it's not the deciding factor of the story. To the degree that the movie strove to avoid emotional cliches, it works very well.
THE DEVIL'S OWN is not the best movie with either Pitt or Ford, but it is a solid one, and touches on a few points that make it a worthwhile time. And has more sense than to try and solve everything with a bullet.
Three out of four glasses of beer.
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