Review: Devil’s Advocate (1997)
Not a pro-lawyer movie.
The main points:
1) To get one of those apartments that overlook the Park, you either have to be the Devil, or be in Satan’s immediate employ.
2) The scene that most amazes New Yorkers is when Keanu Reeves goes off to confront Satan at the end of the film. He walks onto 57th Street, near First Avenue. 57th Street is empty: you see nothing all the way to the Hudson. My reaction: “Damn, those are great special effects.”
All in all, not a bad film. The basic plot is this: Keanu, a hot shot lawyer in Gainesville, FL, is hired by a big NYC law firm. He’s treated like a prince, like an heir apparent. There’s the fab apartment, vast amounts of money, rubbing shoulders with the Great and Good of the land (Sen. D’Amato does a cameo; that he’s in league with Satan is unsurprising), etc. He’s assigned a big case: a wealthy real estate magnate is suspected of killing wife and kids. He’s able to get an acquittal, despite seriously believing that the man’s guilty. During the course of these events, his young wife is isolated in the huge apartment, and she starts seeing weird things all over the place. Weird dreams ensue, demons appear in mirrors, and so on.
I actually liked this film a lot. The previews and the commercials make it seem hokey, but it’s pulled off well. I also have a large bias against Keanu being anything other than Ted (which, btw, was on TBS a couple of weeks ago), but, unlike in, say, Johnny Mnemonic, he didn’t suck. I suppose this was the first step in the road to redemption, that eventually leads to The Matrix. I watch “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” in part for its idea of personifying high school trauma in the form of vampires. I suppose I can only appreciate this attempt to make literal the idea of a defense lawyer selling his soul to get a guilty client off.
One very nice touch: when Keanu’s first in NYC (the city, by the way, is in the “whore of Babylon” mode in the film), he’s taken by Al Pacino to the roof of the building (the office decor actually looks like a well-lit Quake room, which merely means I’ve played too much Quake). They bargain for his employment while strolling along the edge. This, I suppose, is a reference to the part when Satan tempts Christ in the desert, the part when they go up on the mountaintop and Satan offers up the dominion of the world. Keanu, of course, accepts. (This may be one flaw with the film: Keanu accepts too readily; there’s some moral choice, but we don’t feel it viscerally. Keanu doesn’t really fall, he just sort of drifts down there.)
Actually, in a further divergence, I had a flashback to high school English class, where, I think, we talked about Graham Greene or Sommerset Maughin (sp?). One of them extended the parable of Satan tempting Christ with a final offer by Satan: “Go up on the cross, wear a crown of thorns, and you will become the savior of mankind.” If I recall, the passage goes on with Christ accepting, and Satan laughing until his sides hurt, knowing all the wars and destruction that will be committed in the name of god. I’d like to read a similar thread in this movie. At the end, Al Pacino has grand plans for Keanu. One can read the sin of vanity into this, and the film’s very neat ending.