Respected, I must confess – I have a huge soft spot for “The Devil’s Advocate”. The 1997 supernatural courtroom thriller stars Keanu Reeves as Kevin Lomax, a hotshot lawyer from Florida (with the world’s most southern accent) who is recruited to a vampiric defense attorney’s office in New York, described as charismatic and Runs the slightly terrifying John Milton (Al Pacino). , As he abandons his morality to win the case, Kevin’s wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron) begins having nightmares with demonic influence. You see, Milton is not only devilishly handsome and talented, he’s actually the Devil himself.
“The Devil’s Advocate” hinges entirely on Pacino’s performance, as he plays Milton with an extraordinary joy that only a rare few of our greatest actors can ever attempt. It’s a little bit Tony Montana from “Scarface” when he’s drinking copious amounts of coke and a little bit Lieutenant Hanna from “Heat,” all wrapped up in some deliciously decadent camp. However, the surrounding performances are also important, and Reeves is often quite innocent and confused, a lamb among wolves. His performance holds up perfectly against Pacino’s high-intensity theatrics (much like Reeves and Gary Oldman in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”). Thus, it’s hard to imagine that once upon a time, a very different heartthrob of the 90s played the role of an almost increasingly unethical lawyer.
Keanu Reeves replaces Brad Pitt in The Devil’s Advocate
According to an interview with Al Pacino Los Angeles Times Since 1997, “The Devil’s Advocate” spent a lot of time stuck in development hell. “The Lost Boys” director Joel Schumacher was at one point prepared to make the decision to cast Brad Pitt in the role of Kevin Lomax instead of Keanu Reeves. Ultimately, however, Schumacher could not find the right actor to play the Devil and Pacino even handed him an early draft of the script from “Showdown in Little Tokyo” writer Jonathan Lemkin, feeling that the character was something he could not do before. Have seen already. Many times before also. Certainly, while Schumacher is brilliant at directing a particular kind of camp (such as the wonderfully campy and bizarre “Batman Forever”), his version of “The Devil’s Advocate” is almost impossible to imagine.
However, it’s a little easy to picture Pitt in the role of Lomax, especially considering the type of roles he was playing in the mid-1990s. His portrayal of a world-weary young policeman is not all that different from Lomax in David Fincher’s “Seven,” and Pitt had the charisma to bring the courtroom scenes to life. Still, while he may seem a little too clever to fall for the devil’s tricks, Reeves’ natural innocence helps make the film a success.
Devil’s Advocate Perfectly Presented
Say what you want about Reeves’s sometimes ridiculous accent, but he is absolutely perfect in “The Devil’s Advocate.” He’s sweet and lost, an innocent in a world of villains, and he serves as the perfect audience representative because we can easily put ourselves in his shoes. That’s why “The Devil’s Advocate” ranks among our best Keanu Reeves movies of all time, as well as our best Al Pacino movies of all time; It’s simply an amazing movie and its two lead performances are key to its greatness. Supporting performances from Connie Nielsen, Tamara Tunney, Chris Bauer, Craig T. Nelson, and Charlize Theron (whose performance convinced Patty Jenkins to cast her in “Monster”) help sell this bizarre and bloody courtroom drama. Which increases the risk of an apocalypse. The battle between heaven and hell.
“The Devil’s Advocate” is one of those 1990s movies that could never really be made today, and that’s largely due to its near-perfect cast. Pitt fared well without it and starred in the eponymous but very different Irish terrorism thriller “The Devil’s Own” that same year. I guess 1997 was the year of evil titles in cinema, but we were all the better off for it.
