“The Devil’s Advocate” is a new addition to Netflix and has been trending since its ‘Netflix release’ sometime last month. You’ve probably seen it so many times you’d already wanted to just click play and see what the fuss is all about. My two cents? Don’t!
If you’ve never watched it, and you keep seeing it, just ignore it. Ignore the beautiful lady on the cover, ignore the tempting plot summary, ignore the ensemble cast list, ignore the ratings you’ll find online, and just leave it alone. Just watch “Squid Game” or something.
Okay, you may be thinking now “it can’t be that bad,” or keep telling yourself you have a coconut head and you’ll watch it. No problem, go ahead.
After all, how can a movie with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves be so bad even I wouldn’t recommend you watch it?
“The Devil’s Advocate” is a 1997 ‘supernatural horror’ film — that’s what wiki said — about a young talented lawyer, Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) from a small town called Gainesville, who got a mouth-watering job offer from the city that never sleeps. He arrives in New York with his wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron) to resume work for a huge law firm headed by a sassy and beguiling lawyer, John Milton (Al Pacino.) Milton, as we’ll discover later on, is Satan himself.
The movie starts from Gainesville and focused on Lomax’s talent as a defense lawyer getting seemingly impossible acquittals for his guilty clients. Although supported all the way by his very young wife and content with his local success, all that would change very fast when he’s invited on an all-expense-paid trip to New York to ‘pick a jury’ for Milton Chadwick Waters.
He gets to New York, meets John Milton, gets an offer to stay, and he takes it. Not very long after, he gets what might be the biggest case of his career; a triple-murder involving a rich client of Milton’s. He becomes obsessed with the case, barely having time for his wife, and that’s when things start to happen. Bad things. Real bad things.
In no time, Lomax was in an impossible situation; drop a very huge groundbreaking case and take care of his wife who appears to be getting worse mentally, or continue the case and risk his wife getting even worse. I don’t need to tell you which one he chose.
Things get even more complicated for him as he discovers that his client who claimed innocence was in fact guilty. All the while, Milton’s influence overshadowing the whole thing. Milton is the devil, he’s always there. And, Kevin Lomax was working for the devil.
What makes the movie good is probably the impeccable acting of Al Pacino, a veteran who more often than not has an energetic display on-screen. His portrayal of the devil here is not different from the average Pacino performance you’ll find in other psychological movies like “Insomnia (2002)”.
Keanu Reeves’ portrayal of Kevin Lomax is not bad either. Except for a few instances of him forcing a smile, it was all right.
There are a couple of twists in the story, of course. But if you do sit through this movie, be sure to have a couple of beers with you because it’s two and half hours of a story with the worst possible ending, okay acting, interesting court scenes, and probably not the best portrayal of the supernatural you’ll ever see.
You’re promised horror, but I don’t see any horror here. What I see is a movie I’ll totally play if I have a girl over and just wanna play something. Too bad, cause I love Al Pacino almost as much as I love Keanu Reeves.