From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie The Devil’s Advocate released in 1997.
Starring:
Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, Charlize Theron
Directed by:
Taylor Hackford
Genre:
Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Rating:
R
Budget:
$57,000,000 (estimated)
IMDb Rating is currently:
7.5
The Synopsis is:
Kevin Lomax is a talented defense attorney who wins the toughest cases for the slimiest criminals in the world. He is actively pursued by a law firm owner, John Milton who happens to be the devil and also his dad.
Story:
This is an adaptation of a 1990 novel by Andrew Neiderman which he successfully pitched to Warner Bros. as a film about “a law firm in New York that represents only guilty people, and never loses". That premise alone is pretty intriguing with endless options of exciting stories. And maybe that was partly the reason it took about 6 years for the film to get produced, with several actors in the running to play in the film.
The screenplay was written by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy with changes from director Taylor Hackford and even actor Al Pacino at one point.
Taylor Hackford said that it was "a modern-day morality play", or what you could call a "Faustian tale" with a focus on humanity’s free will. He also drew inspiration from films like Rosemary's Baby and The Omen, which are quite prominent in the film’s tone.
As much as it is a tale pulling from famous classic poems about hell such as Dante’s Inferno from The Divine Comedy in the 14th century and John Milton’s Paradise Lost from the 17th century, the film is a social commentary about the modern age of the justice system and how it could be used as a tool to allow criminals to go free playing upon the vanity and greed of crooked law practices.
Whether you agree with the film’s take on the film’s take on the profession of law or not, I think it was a fantastic industry to explore for this concept because of the intense struggle with ethics that lawyers confront with every case.
As well the main message of the film is that evil exists in many forms as in the Inferno’s 9 circles of hell and the 7 deadly sins. The films shows you all of them represented in it’s characters. It focuses on greed and vanity (or pride), perhaps because it doesn’t necessarily lead to causing harm upon others, but the film shows you how it definitely can.
The premise and dialogue are definitely conversation worthy, provocative and the highlight of the film.
Pacing:
At 2h 24 minutes it’s way too long. There are several scenes, characters, tonal shifts and segments that could have been completely cut out of the film and not really change the out come. But if you are a fan of the film, you don’t want to miss a moment of this movie, even the parts that are so insane it boggles the mind.
Challenge:
The biggest challenge in the film is John Milton, appropriately named after the author of "Paradise Lost," about man's fall from God's grace. He is the owner of a snazzy New York Law Firm with the world's richest and most unscrupulous clientele.
If you didn’t know, from the movie trailer, poster, and title, John Milton in this film is the devil. He ultimately wants to get his son Kevin Lomax and his daughter Christabella Andreoli to incestuously breed the antichrist so he can bring hell on earth.
John Milton provides lots of meaty dialogue and it’s definitely where the film really has its most ridiculous antics and I love it completely. Wow! It’s so much fun to listen to his many, many ranting monologues.
Many of them are anti-christian, coming from John Milton’s point of view, so that may upset some people. For me personally, I wasn’t bothered by it because I am quite comfortable with my beliefs, but it was a testament to how completely opposite I feel about the views in this film and this is why I thought it was amusing and an interesting scenario of events that happen in the film.
And on the opposite part of the spectrum, for somebody out there the stuff being said in the film, this is their gospel. I think it’s hilarious and I also think it was unintentionally intentionally written for the amusement of the audience.
And even though he is the villain of all villains, he’s likeable acting as the audience’s guide to explain what’s happening and why. His monologues are like magical incantations to just suggests the things that happen. He doesn’t actually do anything, he just influences humanity to indulge in sin using their free will.
And the free will asks the audience and humanity in general to own up to their part in evil doings. It’s a choice.
Example 1
John Milton: Vanity, definitely my favorite sin.
Example 2
John Milton: I'm here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I've nurtured every sensation man's been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I'm a fan of man! I'm a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.
Example 3
John Milton: Eddie Barzoon, Eddie Barzoon. Hah! Oh, I nursed him through two divorces, a cocaine rehab, and a pregnant receptionist. Heh. God's creature, right? God's special creature? Hah! And I've warned him Kevin, I've warned him every step of the way. Watching him bounce around like a f**king game, like a windup toy! Like 250 pounds of self serving greed on wheels. The next thousand years is right around the corner, Kevin, and Eddie Barzoon-take a good look, because he's the poster child for the next millennium! These people, it's no mystery where they come from. You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire, you build egos the size of cathedrals, fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse, grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god, and where can you go from there? And as we're scrambling from one deal to the next, who's got his eye on the planet? As the air thickens, the water sours, and even the bees honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity. And it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There's no chance to think, to prepare. It's buy futures, sell futures, when there is no future! We got a runaway train boy, we got a billion Eddie Barzoons all jogging into the future.
Example 4
John Milton: Free will. It's like butterfly wings: once touched, they never get off the ground. No, I only set the stage. You pull your own strings.
Example 5
John Milton: [in his master room, inside his tower] right about one thing, I have been watching, I couldn't help myself, watching waiting and holding my breath I'm no puppeteer I don't make things happen, it doesn't work like that
Example 6
John Milton: vanity is so basic, its self-love, it's the all-natural opiate, it's not that you didn't care for Mary Ann it's just that you were a little more involved with someone else which was yourself, Don't be too hard on yourself you wanted something more believe me
Christabella is the key to Milton’s master plan, but we don’t get to know much about her except that she seems to be ready to do whatever he wants her to do in the scenery. She’s a henchwoman in a way set up to be part of Kevin’s temptation and she is doing a great job of it as well. But we don’t know anything about her background or her motivation and besides being part of the scenery and the personification of lust.
We have the violent, greedy, and treacherous Alex Cullen, an ultra rich billionaire client of the law firm who has horribly killed his maid, wife and stepson in order to follow his lustful relationship with his underaged stepdaughter. Disgusting. He is the perfect example of where the film displays more of the sins of mankind and he couldn’t be more of a villian on his own, often stealing the scenes he’s in. He’s very cringeworthy.
Then there is Eddie Barzoon sniveling who is the firm's managing partner and just a nasty viper in the film. His downfall really comes from being envious of Kevin after seeing how Milton puts him above all others and discovers that Kevin's name is on the firm's charter. He is so greedy that he is willing to bite the hand that feeds him and threatens to inform the United States Attorney's office of the law firm's fraudulence with his wrath.
There are a host of vile characters in this film, again all being an example of sin in humanity.
Empathy:
Kevin Lomax is the protagonist here named after the the score called Lo MACH, of 60 out of 100 or lower in the MACH-IV, a test of Machiavellianism. Machiavellianism in psychology refers to a personality trait which sees a person so focused on their own interests to manipulate, deceive, and exploit others in order to achieve their goals.
However, Kevin would get a high score on that test because he displays the characteristics of a person who is morality and mostly failing at it. The film starts out with Kevin discovering that the man that he is representing on trial is actually the pedophile he is on trial for.
He goes into the bathroom and when he emerges, he makes the decision to destroy the credibility of the victim and wins the case. He is a master manipulator using a monologue just like Milton uses them, in a way being a spellbinding incantation to influence the jury.
Cocky and consumed by vanity and ambition, winning his courtroom cases is all that he cares about and once he is offered a job to work for John Milton, Milton uses his weakness to his advantage.
In many ways Kevin is just like the audience being taken for the ride. He doesn’t upstage his surroundings because he is the fish out of water, learning the ropes.
John Milton setup temptations to lead Kevin down the path of corruption. You can see that he is slowly being influenced by the temptations as he picks up the habit of smoking he once quit and we see he becomes fond of wearing darker suits to subtly indicate his internal darkening.
The film plays upon Kevin being amused by his temptations, but he doesn’t act on them readily because his marriage still keeps him grounded. At first, it all seems to be part of the couple’s ambitious plan as Kevin and his wife Mary Ann moves to New York City.
She is a willing accomplice and convinces Kevin to stay even when he gets hints that something strange is happening near the beginning of the film. She too is immediately attracted to Milton and seduced by the glamorous rich life.
However, unbeknownst to Kevin, Mary Ann is being tortured by this new world, being told that her hair is wrong, her choices are wrong, and she’s intimidated coming from a small town. Those are pretty standard challenges but what is especially terrible is that she begins seeing her new friends morph into monsters.
She also sees hallucinations, and she discovers that she cannot have children. It drives her to be ultimately committed. It’s pretty devastating what happens to her, but what her character is able to do within the story is provide more answers to what is going on.
In many ways she reminds me of Shakespeare's Lady MacBeth from the play MacBeth depicting the repentant sinner, horrified and driven insane with guilt.
She tries to explain that the experience that they are going through is turning them into monsters, letting criminals get away with hurting people. She also calls the experience a test of some kind. And she’s completely right and it all has to do with placing the temptations in place to allow them to make their choices. It’s the free will factor, once again.
In the beginning of the film, Kevin puts his wedding ring on the counter to wash his hands in the bathroom, foreshadowing his eventual lack of attention to his marriage. In the beginning the two seem to be wonderful partners centering each other in time of need. Which is a total juxtaposition of how at odds they are because when Kevin leaves Mary Ann alone, it plays into her fears of being abandoned, and destroys their unique bond.
His vanity for being a winner is more powerful than his love for her sending Mary Ann off the deep end and eventually to a dramatic suicide.
The film uses mirrors as a way to show us when our main characters are making decisions to choose their destiny. In the beginning of the film, Kevin after discovering his client is a pedophile, looks in the mirror in the bathroom as he is getting some suggestion from a character that is later revealed to be Milton. In the mirror you can see two reflections indicating two paths that Kevin can take. When he makes his decision you can see that his final reflection is distorted in the mirror, transforming him into a monster.
You can see this mirror play again when Mary Ann is getting suggestions to cut her hair from Milton and she sees a distorted reflection indicating that his influences is changing her. It’s a visual subtle storytelling effect.
The suggestion is there, but the decisions were theirs.
The most incredible part about it, is that our protagonist is given the opportunity to save his wife. John Milton offers to take Kevin off the central court case in the film. Kevin uses his free will to ultimately choose the court case, arguing reasonably that he would resent Mary Ann later on for getting in the way of a great opportunity.
A life or a winning a court case? Which one is more important? That is the problem with Kevin.
He even admits that one of the reason that he is so good at picking jurors for defense cases is that he spent time illegally listening to juries deliberate and learned how they thought.
He’s unscrupulous... with a little bit of a conscious.
John Milton says vanity is his favorite sin. Vanity is Kevin’s problem, but it was also his father’s as it was the reason he was cast out of heaven. Like father, like son.
Technical:
The technical aspects of this film is not bad. There are interesting transitions. Great lighting, sets, locations. It’s a really good looking film.
The 90’s computer morphing demon faces are very dated. They could be creepy to most people, but they make me laugh a lot.
There are lots of 90’s jump scares and some suspense and tension woven into the scenes.
At the end of the film, John Milton morphs into Lucifer in the form of the fallen angel. The effect was created by combining masks from molds from Keanu Reeves, and Al Pacino as well as a much earlier mask from the film The Godfather (1972) from make-up artist Dick Smith.
It was truly one of the films most outrageous effects that intrigued me so much. I didn’t realize until seeing that how much the two actors looked alike, making it more believable that they could be related.
A few minutes prior, there was a wonderful living mural behind John Milton as he rants. The effect was achieved by taking shots of ballerinas placed in a tank next to a blue screen. Filming that sequence spanned three months before adding the computer effects, costing $2 million. That was 40% of the overall budget for special effects.
Though it was an incredibly memorable and gorgeous effect. I am not sure it was worth the price tag. However, I do understand that when it comes to special effects, a production can run into a few snags in the effort to be innovative… and for the time, I believe it was.
However, it would cost the studio even more money yet, as the still version of the mural was a replica of a real life sculpture by Frederick Hart at the Episcopal National Cathedral in Washington, DC, called "Ex Nihilo". Hart and the church sued Warner Brothers just after the film’s release.
The scene was meant to be a modern version of Paradise Lost's "Downfall of the Rebel Angels" depicted by artist William Blake.
The cinematography was especially good in my opinion, playing upon the crispy lines of New York City, the emptiness of the Lomax home, the swallowing darkness of Milton’s office.
I enjoyed the score quite a bit in this film by James Newton Howard, setting the mood for a very ominous situation with a hint of supernatural orchestral cues and operatics. It all has a bigger than life feel to it that I loved about it.
Performances:
This is a very interesting subject matter because even Siskel and Ebert argued about this in their review of the film. I am one of those people, you know… one of those people, who enjoyed Keanu Reeves performance in this. I know a lot of people are not a fan of his early acting abilities and I can see how, but in this, he’s really good. His character is not an instigator in this, he is learning about what’s going on in the story as are we, so typically, we need some kind of reserved behavior where he is a student before he can be an effective participant.
He plays Kevin Lomax with a lot of spice so when characters push him, he gets up in their face and pushes back. He’s holding his own while providing a platform for the other performers to tell their character’s story. That’s what you need here and he delivers perfectly.
To prepare for this, Keanu Reeves spent time hanging out with defense attorneys in New York and you can really see him applying all that he learned from them in this.
Even just looking at stills from the film you can see the emotional range he’s putting into his performance.
What most people don't know about this film is that Reeves turned down $11 million to make the sequel to Speed released in 1994 and agreed to a pay cut worth millions of dollars so that the producers could meet Pacino's salary demands. He was very passionate about the project since the beginning and has commented prior about his fondness for the film.
Al Pacino in this is just phenomenal. Wow! He’s just over the top and ultra playing John Milton and I loved every minute of it. It’s just one of those performances that you’ll never forget because he is showing up the character and the film gives him so much screen time and play space to really let loose. It’s a true marvel.
To prepare for the role, Pacino watched the 1941 film The Devil and Daniel Webster and observed tips from Walter Huston as Mr. Scratch. And as well, he also read the classics that inspired the screenplay Dante's Inferno and Paradise Lost.
Originally Al Pacino turned down the film five times. I can see why they would have wanted him so desperately for the role because he was so spectacularly entertaining as John Milton. He was hammy, over the top, and just a whole lot of fun.
Charlize Theron was great as Mary Ann putting all of her heart into playing a traumatized housewife. She researched the role by spending time with a psychologist specializing in the condition of schizophrenia.
One of the surprise performances for me was Craig T. Nelson, mostly known for his television work, was completely against type in a villainous role and he steals every scene he’s in. It was so incredible to see him as such a contemptible character.
Best:
Hands down, for me, the best part of the film was definitely John Milton’s monologues. He’s got about 4 of them in the film and they are all astounding to witness.
Wish List:
Though I love the title of the film, The Devil’s Advocate and the story is about the legal profession. I think it’s brilliant. However, if the trailer, and poster didn’t give away that Al Pacino’s character was going to be the devil, it would have been a lovely discovery in the film.
Instead, it has a lackluster reveal, but the film made it seem as if the audience should have been surprised. And to be honest, while watching the film, you might not have known who he is until it’s announced pretty late in the film.
The first time you get the sense that John Milton was possibly a demon of some kind was when he gave a monologue during the death scene of one of his henchmen, Eddie Barzoon once he became a liability. He gives a long speech as if it were a spell incantation. And the second time is when he puts his finger in holy water and creates bubbles at Eddie Barzoon’s funeral.
When Mary Ann begins to feel abandoned and lonely, why didn’t she just get a job to stay busy or go home to visit just to get her sanity back. That is what most people do. It just seemed like a written convenience that she erupts at the climax of the film.
Right after Mary Ann’s death, Kevin is seduced into having sex with Christabella and I really felt, it was too easy for Kevin to refuse. It was too ridiculous of a situation for most people with free will to agree too. It was too convenient for the film and not a realistic scenario.
The ending:
There’s a bit of confusion about the end of the film. Because it looks like the entire events of the film was just a dream or a hallucination.
However, I think Kevin is made to think that it is. But in actuality he did experience what happens in the film and the devil simply resets the story in order to test Kevin once again.
They are being subjected to a never ending loop of temptations until Milton get what he wants.
It’s actually quite fascinating and one of the most impressive features of the film.
But it brings up a good question, if the devil can turn back time, why not go back in time far enough to make it so that Kevin would never have met Mary Ann and arrange for Christabella to enter his life sooner.
This would be a good TV show with each season being a new reset of the story, where the devil plays different characters to try to get Kevin or another son or daughter to create the antichrist.
Enjoyment:
I really like this film because it makes me laugh. Is that too weird when it’s not a comedy?
The filmmakers really push the envelope with adult language and sexual scenes that can sometimes make you feel a little uncomfortable. It’s a bit difficult to watch because it deals with infidelity, incest, molestation, and some pretty brutal murders.
It’s a creepy film, I won’t lie, but somehow I really like it and I think it’s mainly for Al Pacino’s performance. Either you’ll love it or dislike it, but you’ll feel strongly about it and that is what I like about it.
I loved the concepts of the story acting more of a precautionary tale for individuals to see the greed and vanity in everyday ambitions, but what it only lacks is a solution or an anecdote to give the viewers some hope. And in that lacking, I also found it to be refreshing too, that even when the characters do the right thing, it doesn’t always mean that they are out of the challenge of evil.
It's a never ending challenge for Kevin, as it has been for humanity. And as much as it is a tale of a world full of sins, it emphasizes humanity’s free will and ability to choose a better outcome.
This one definitely goes down as a very guilty pleasure.
My Rating:
9.0
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it . This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off.
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
If you enjoy my content and want me to continue you can help at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/retronerdgirl
Follow Retro Nerd Girl on twitter: https://twitter.com/Retro_Nerd_Girl
Like Retro Nerd Girl on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/retronerdgirl
No comments:
Post a Comment