The Devil's Advocate

The Devil's Advocate

God's your prankster, my boy.Think of it. He gives man
instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift and then, I swear to you -- for his own
amusement -- his own private, cosmic gag reel -- he sets the rules in opposition.



Meet Faust in fancy cowboy boots: Kevin Lomax, the lawyer played by Keanu Reeves in Taylor Hackford's unexpectedly seductive ''Devil's Advocate.'' Kevin is at the heart of a high-concept sentence (''Slick yuppie is co-opted by slicker New York Satan'') that has been spun into a lavish-looking, cleverly entertaining morality play with shades of ''Rosemary's Baby,'' ''Wall Street'' and countless other tales of selling out to Manhattan's temptations.

This time it's the devil as head honcho at a law firm, with Al Pacino having great, wily fun with the screenplay's bons mots. ''Look at me, underestimated from Day One!'' bellows this executive, who has a taste for fashionably urbane black. ''You'd never think I was a Master of the Universe, now wouldya?''

His idea of such mastery definitely goes beyond Tom Wolfe's.

With a gratifyingly light touch, the screenplay by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy (adapted from a novel by Andrew Neiderman) names Mr. Pacino's character John Milton, since he knows a thing or two about paradise lost. And it is in Gainesville, Fla., that they first find the ambitious Kevin, who thinks he has much to gain. Kevin, played with uncharacteristic sharpness by Mr. Reeves as a smart and debonair hotshot, is first seen successfully defending an unsavory schoolteacher against a charge of molesting a student (Heather Matarazzo of ''Welcome to the Dollhouse''). Then, with his gorgeous and sultry wife, Mary Ann (Charlize Theron), he celebrates this dubious victory. High on his own career trajectory, Kevin is in a mood to say yes when a strange lawyer flashes a big check and tries luring him to Manhattan.

The firm that summons Kevin has business in places like the Middle East, the Balkans, Central America and West Africa. It has a receptionist named Caprice. It has a witchily beautiful temptress called Christabella (Connie Nielson). And it has the devilish penthouse lair of Milton, complete with Purgatory artwork and a big roaring fire. Bruno Rubeo's deft production design, handsomely photographed by Andrzej Bartkowiak with the same burnished look he has given many Sidney Lumet films, gives this place a stark minimalism that is one part sleek efficiency, one part torture chamber. Running water cascading off the open edge of a terrace is one of the film's many ways of suggesting souls on the brink.

The Lomaxes are given a big apartment and Mary Ann stays home the way Rosemary did, painting the place while her husband advances his career. Meanwhile, Kevin stays preoccupied and becomes increasingly seduced by the cases that come his way. One involves Delroy Lindo as a mysterious figure accused of sacrificing goats in his ghetto basement. Another features Craig T. Nelson as a developer living in Trump-like, gilded splendor. The film's more mischievous tricks include using Donald Trump's real apartment as a set, since Versailles was perhaps unavailable, and producing Senator Alfonse D'Amato at a party scene for the Devil's law firm.

Meanwhile, Mary Ann starts having trouble. She misses her husband. She is pursued by Milton, who talks her into doing something drab to her beautiful blond hair. She receives equally unhelpful decorating advice from fellow corporate wives and abandons her favorite color, though Mary Ann's bright green figures sadly in a later hospital scene. During one outing with these women, complete with shopping, chardonnay and talk of plastic surgery, Mary Ann suddenly sees a terrifying vision.

The film uses morphing and Rick Baker's monster effects strikingly, but it also keeps its gimmicks well tethered to reality: an afternoon like Mary Ann's might be enough to make anyone see demons. Later on, Kevin's wandering eye yields an unsettling sex scene in which two different women in his life are suddenly made indistinguishable. Mr. Hackford uses diabolical editing at strategic moments to confuse identities in this way. While there is no small irony in a big Hollywood film's finger-wagging about the seductions of wealth and power, ''Devil's Advocate'' does avoid clumsy moralizing and old-hat notions of good and evil. It helps that Kevin is no naif, and that his churchgoing Mama (Judith Ivey) sees Manhattan as ''a dwelling place of demons'' well before that perception becomes unavoidable. It helps that the film finds Faustian deal making and yuppie ambition not very different. And it also helps that in this, the ultimate lawyer joke of a movie, it becomes so clear why Kevin's legal talents are the Devil's instruments of choice. Mr. Pacino's mischievous Milton eventually notes that nobody on earth could do his bidding better than a well-trained band of attorneys. If those attorneys are as pampered as Kevin threatens to become, so much the better. As Milton likes to point out, ''Vanity is definitely my favorite sin.''
(Special trailer note: Lurid advance ads for ''Devil's Advocate'' make it look ridiculous. It's not.)







.
Look but don't
touch. Touch but don't taste.
And while you're jumping from one foot
to the other he's laughing his
sick fucking ass off! He's a
tight-ass. He's a sadist. He's
an absentee landlord!
(incredulous)
Worship that? Never..
Vanity is definitely my favorite
sin. Self love. It's so basic.
What a drug. Cheap, all-natural,
and right at your fingertips.
Pride. That's where you're
strongest. And believe me, I
understand. Work for someone
else? -- Hey, I couldn't hack it.
'Better to reign in Hell than
serve in Heaven.'