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Rating: Behind the rhetorical skill and the fine clothes hides the most vile being of the American system: the lawyer. Ambitious, fame and success-driven, deceitful and rhetorical enough, without evident guilt, the shady defense lawyer defends the guilty at any cost.
I’m not talking about "Liar Liar," the amusing legal comedy colored by Jim Carrey’s skill, but about "The Devil’s Advocate," a film from 1997 written by Tony Gilroy and directed by Taylor Hackford; the duo fiercely aims to undermine the figure in question until equating it to the devil. They initially attempt the provincial approach, where even the small and ambitious young lawyer (Reeves) who doesn’t want to lose causes his damage by presumably defending with greedy skill the most obvious of culprits, even though the defendant’s guilt is evident. And then they celebrate with rounds of alcohol and intoxication for the victory achieved at any cost, and thus, the great opportunity presents itself. In what can be defined as "the capital of the world," the dirty, corrupt, and surreal New York presents the successful young lawyer with the opportunity to defend figures that "rhyme" with unspeakable criminal actions. On the top floor of a skyscraper, between a water garden and a sparse study with Gothic profiles, looms the devilish figure of Milton (Al Pacino) who preaches humility (no one notices that step), but claims to have the planet in his grip. He is a figure of apparent absolute power, indispensable to all men struggling for personal fulfillment or the practice of dark and distant perverse rituals.
In a river of money and surreal prospects, the bewildered lawyer immerses himself in his work, leaving his wife to fend for herself as she has immense difficulty adapting and despairs over the color of the huge, luxurious apartment. The couple's relationship cools, and the beautiful Charlize Theron falls into depression, and it’s unclear how much the nefarious Milton's influence contributes to the poor woman's extreme and desperate act. In contrast to the wise master, seducer and manipulator of souls, is the fearful and pious mother of Keanu Reeves who bursts into New York to give a moralizing lesson to her son, from whom she has always hidden the truth about his father.
Disturbing and dark, dramatic and erotic, perverse and chaotic, the film runs for over two hours and showcases the class of the great Pacino, who knows how to masterfully embody the devil. Reeves is a lost lamb, Theron a doll with no head or tail.
The conversations of the devil/Pacino about God's actions are disturbing, leaving man confused while setting contradictory rules "look, but don’t touch, touch but don’t taste, taste but don’t swallow" while the devil has his "face fixed in the world since the beginning of time." Thrilling, at the party, his digression on the neck of the sensual Theron: while holding her hair, he pronounces "a woman's neck is the border between mind and body, standing proud as a border city, it is the outpost of her mystique"—how better to argue?
Excellent cinematography, portraying a threatening and dark New York, proud and evil, desolate and teeming. A fierce setting that makes it appear as the eye of the world and a reservoir of malicious and perverse hidden mechanisms.
An unsettling finale, which I prefer not to reveal, but which mirrors the director and screenwriter's arguments in a sort of festival of biblical citations made of somewhat meager clichés, in a rather sad framework where the lesson, even if understood, is never really learned.
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