Devil’s Advocate (1997), a horror film directed by Taylor Hackford, is the story of a very ambitious young lawyer who never loses a case, and ends up sacrificing his morals to win at all cost. The question is, does he really win or has he made a pact with the devil?
Star Cast
Keanu Reeves - Kevin Lomax
Al Pacino - John Milton
Charlize Theron - Mary Ann Lomax
My thoughts
I have to say that the plot of the movie is not very good. We have a young ambitious lawyer who has never lost a case and slowly this Florida man loses his sense of decency and defends the guilty parties just for the win. His fame precedes him and Kevin Lomax is surprised that a big successful law firm in New York headed by John Milton offers him a job. This firm deals with all only hard-core guilty criminals, but Lomax is less perturbed over that than he is about losing a case. His vanity will not let him lose a case. He will do whatever he must, to get murderers off.
Lomax becomes so involved in his career that he does not see how sick his wife is getting. She is having nightmares about the evil that surrounds her. Lomax takes it to mean that she is going crazy and has her committed.
The movie becomes bizarre at that point. We find out that John Milton is actually Kevin’s father and Lomax never knew it. That plot twist alone would be weird enough in any movie, yet there is more to come. We find out that John Milton is the devil himself. Hmmm, that is where all credibility of the movie is lost.
The plot becomes more convoluted when Lomax finds that his father’s associate is his half sister and they must mate to produce the antichrist. However, Lomax is saved from hell and damnation simply from the fact that he must give of his own freewill for this to occur, and he refuses.
I will not reveal the end of the movie because I don’t like to spoil it for everyone.
I will now talk about certain themes in the movie.
Devil’s advocate is the name of the movie and Kevin Lomax, is the devil’s advocate, incidentally advocat is french for lawyer and that is what Kevin does for a living. An advocate is someone who serves the needs of others, for Kevin it is the guilty that he serves, and of course he is serving his father who is the devil, even though he doesn’t know it till the end of the movie.
It is not a coincidence that the devil or Kevin’s father is called John Milton, if you remember John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, the classic account about the fall of Adam and Eve and Satan’s intervention. In Paradise Lost , Satan’s biggest fault is his pride. Vanity is also Kevin’s biggest fault. The movie even takes a quote from Paradise Lost, where John Milton states, "Better to reign in hell, then serve in Heaven."
The medieval architecture and fire rings are reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno.
The scene where we get to realize John Milton is not just a man, is where he is in the church scene and his dips his finger in the holy water–causing it to boil. This boiling water scene is also likened to Kevin’s life, which now he finally realizes is out of control and he has reached his metaphorical boiling point.
The final theme I would like to mention is about vanity or pride, and like Dante’s Satan who is full of pride, Kevin’s pride is his downfall, his weakness. He must be on top of his game. He must be well known. Now here is where the movie refers to yet another classic. Kevin is not very different than Willy Lomax, a character with the same last name, in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman . Willy’s vanity was that he too believed everyone knew him and loved him. He lived his entire life thinking this way.
Vanity is one of the seven deadly sins.
The end of the movie is very befitting of the theme. The Devil, Al Pacino, smirks and says, "vanity, definitely my favorite sin."
On a scale of 1 - 5
1 - terrible
2 - mediocre
3 - good
4 - very good
5 - excellent
I rate this movie as a 3.
