favorite critics:
1. Roger Ebert (Chicago Suntimes) 2. Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) 3. Owen Gleiberman (EW) 4. Jeff Millar (Houston Chronicle) 5. Michael MacCambridge (...?)
Keanu Reeves - the anti-actor he proves himself to be on a continual basis - has a dynamite scene in DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. His beautiful, grace-fallen wife has been admitted to a mental hospital. She's seen demons that even her husband is blind to (because of his ambition). Every- one thinks she's crazy. She locks herself in a room, props a chair under the doorknob, and takes a broken shard of glass from the floor to her throat. Reeves is watching, from just outside, helplessly. He grabs a chair, smashes it through the window on the door and the metal screen behind it, until he has gotten to her. It's too late. He is screaming, crying, holding her, calling out for help, while the life slips out of his wife. I've no idea what Reeves did to prepare for this scene; he's never done it before, and certainly nowhere else in this new film of his has that has a thing to do with his character is it displayed. But, during that one isolated stretch of film, he acts and reacts exactly like a real person would, faced with a situation so traumatic.
It's a welcome relief from him, from the rest of the film.
DEVIL'S ADVOCATE does a good job setting up his character, though. He plays Kevin Lomax, a lawyer from Florida with a perfect, unbeaten record. At picture's start, we see him defending a blatant pedophile - a teacher who has made sexual advances toward a student. The girl is on the stand. Lomax knows what he's dealing with; he is reasonably uncomfortable and angry with his client, and yet his pride and ardor for profession are just as much at stake.
Morality and conscience take a back seat.
By the time this overlong film ended, I think I understood pretty much what it was trying to get at, and I liked the intention. Lawyers are evil, because they rescue other evil men. And leading them, at the head of some big firm someplace may, in fact, be the evilest of evil people.
That's who Kevin meets, when he is recruited by a renowned law firm in upscale New York. Now only does Kevin win his cases, he has a stong tendency to pick juries that will acquit, even when a case would appear unwinnable. Unthinkable. "He's always been then. I know that, now" Kevin says at one point, and I think the line doesn't refer just to the big surprise in the film, but to Kevin himself, as a person. Because of the people he defends, and for how he gets his victory in court.
Anyway. This new company couldn't be any happier with Kevin, and none within the company could be more overjoyed than one of its partners, John Milton (Al Pacino). Kevin's ethics mesh well with Milton's, because Milton knows how to pick really, really horrible scum - depraved people, whom, because of who he is, Milton wants to keep out there in the world. And Kevin knows how to keep 'em right there.
Milton presents his protege a life impossible to resist: the girls, the money, the fancy apartment, a perfect environment to mature his considerable talent and feed the ego hand-in-hand "Because the law, my boy, puts us into everything."
It's during a case involving triple homicide that Kevin goes full- tilt, leaving responsibilities in his marriage in wait, breaking tiny promises to his wife and distancing his knowing, religious mother.
"Never let 'em see you coming" Milton tells him, meaning don't come off as anything special, and there's no threat. Yet, that's where the real threat comes from. Makes sense. I liked the subtle points made now and again, like a scene in which Kevin's mother asks him to quote scripture; when it seems like he can't, that must mean he isn't ready for what he has gone and gotten hisself into - but then, he does quote the verse, which means he is ready.
I also liked Charlize Theron, as the wife, though her character was equally under- and overdeveloped; under, in that her insanity seems to come out of left field (I think she mentioned something about a panick attack, but that's all the preparation we receive); over, in that the insanity is taken too far too quickly (what tells us she's the kind of person that would try to kill herself?).
If there's a deadspot, besides Reeves in almost every scene except the one I mentioned, it's the triple homicide thing. It goes nowhere, slow, when the very thing to solve it becomes and remains so obvious. The case merely serves as a turning- point of sorts for Kevin, and it should've taken up less movie.
Hey, why would Kevin get disbarred? I mean, don't lawyers sometimes do what he did?
Cool scene switching using a paint roller.
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