SPOILER WARNING!! This post contains major plot points and revelations.
When I first saw The Devil’s Advocate when it hit video in the spring of 1998, I really didn’t like the ending. The basic premise of the movie is Keanu Reeves plays Kevin Lomax, a young hot-shot lawyer from Gainesville, Fla. who is plucked by the mysterious but powerful John Milton (Al Pacino) who lives and works at his own firm in New York City. Milton initially wants Kevin on a consulting job to pick a jury in a high-profile case.
But the temptation of money, prestige and high-rise buildings that overlook the City That Never Sleeps get to Kevin and he decides to take Milton up on a job offer. Kevin’s businesswoman wife, Mary Ann (Charlize Theron), is a far cry from his salt of the Earth very Christian mother, Alice (Jessica Ivey). You get the sense from the start, Kevin is with Mary Ann because she’s the exact opposite of his mother who seems to revel in the fact that he just got a child sexual predator, Lloyd Gettys (Chris Bauer), acquitted.
They move to NYC and into high-society but things take a turn for the worst. Mary Ann’s life turns to the self-isolation in the high-rise condo as she can’t abide with the materialistic greedy wives of Kevin’s colleagues. Kevin becomes more concerned with his work as well as lusting after a colleague, Christabella Andreoli (Connie Nielsen), who has a more sultry deameanor to her. Her name even means “Beautiful Christian” which becomes ironic with her behavior.
I like that both Nielsen and Theron kind of look a like which I know wasn’t a coincidence in casting. Both women have curly hair. Theron’s is more fair while Nielsen is more fiery red which leads to a revelation at the end. Since both actresses were up and coming, I’m sure the writers and/or the director decided to have Mary Ann cut her hair short and get it straightened and dyed as a brunette to avoid all the confusion. But I think it’s adds to the feeling that Kevin doesn’t like her new hair style.
After winning a health code case on the basis of religious freedom featuring a nice role by Delroy Lindo, Milton puts Kevin in charge of the triple murder case involving NYC business tycoon Alexander Cullen (Craig T. Nelson). The movie was released on Oct. 17, 1997 two years and two weeks since the acquittal of O.J. Simpson and still fresh on the minds of the general public. Cullen is accused of killing his wife, his stepson and the maid. Cullen was also loosely inspired by Donald Trump who allowed a scene to be shot in his NYC penthouse. (He’s not featured liked in Home Alone 2 but someone mentions him in passing.)
Cullen gets acquitted when his executive assistant, Melissa Black (Laura Herrington), admits to having an affair with him on the night of the murders. But Kevin realizes that Cullen actually did kill them as his wife knew she was having an affair and it’s implied Cullen is sexually assaulting his stepdaughter, Alessandra (Monica Keena). This draws similarities with the Florida case as Kevin learns Gettys has been arrested after the dead body of an underage teen was found in his car.
This culminates with Mary Ann having a mental breakdown where she is put in a hospital only to later kill herself, leading Kevin to confront Milton who he finally fealizes is Satan. More than that, Milton sexually assaulted Alice years earlier when she was young siring Kevin as his offspring. Christabella is also Milton’s daughter and Milton encourages him to give into his lust and have sex with her. But Kevin shoots himself sacrificing him to alter Milton’s intentions.
But it was all a dream, or more of else a hallucination as Kevin is back in Florida moments before he has to cross-examine Barbara (Heather Matarazzo), the teen accuser in the Gettys case. Kevin has a crisis of conscience realizes he can’t continue to defend people he knows are guilty steps down before even questioning Barbara. Earlier he catches Gettys playing with himself as she recounts the assault to the court.
Usually, this tactic of “It was just a dream” is a cheat even if we’re just watching something that is fictional. But Advocate isn’t meant to be a straight forward horror movie. It’s a moralty tale about evil temptations. Kevin makes his money from defending people on technicalities even though they are guilty. But during the Cullen case, he went along with a lie because of the prestige it brings him. Even Mary Ann’s job in Florida involves reposessing cars from people who behind in payments. Yes if you lease a car, you’re obigated to make payments but people fall on hard times and what’s the right thing to do other than what your job requires you to do.
Milton talks to Kevin about free will. Kevin didn’t have to accept any thing from Milton. When Mary Ann’s health begins to collapse, Milton says he’s taking Kevin off the Cullen case. But Kevin has issues with that because if he quits the case and his wife will get better, he fears he might hate her for that. Milton is an entity that is dangling something in front of Kevin for him to take or leave but never really putting it in his hand. Even as both Mary Ann and Alice recount their attacks by Milton, they both say they allowed him into their homes.
The whole explusion from the Garden of Eden is based on touching the forbidden fruit. It’s there but Adam and Eve didn’t have to take it. There’s an enormous number of people who work as cashiers every day who never take any money out of the till just because they know it’s not right, not that exactly that they will get in trouble. Kevin never really questions his own convictions until it hits him personally in a negative light.
In the final act of the movie, Mary Ann says she was sexually assaulted by Milton and has a total mental breakdown. Yet Kevin doesn’t realize that other sexual assault victims such as Barbara may have mental breakdowns. He has no problem questioning Barbara’s story but he can’t come to believe Mary Ann is a victim. What Kevin goes through at the end is what others have gone through, but now only realizes it. When Mary Ann kills herself with a shard of mirror class, the nurse calls for a Dr. Jobe which is said in passing but you realize it’s not a coincidence.
The movie doesn’t really work if Pacino doesn’t play Milton a certain way. Almost all actors want to play evil characters and Satan, Lucifer or the Devil is the most evil one. However, he’s never really scary. Robert DeNiro played a scary Satan in Angel Heart. Jack Nicholson played the Devil as a horny boorish character in The Witches of Eastwick. Pacino plays the character as a man who is full of decadence and relishing on the lavish lifestyle it brings him. Also, it’s funny that Milton is a lawyer as people consider them to be bad people.
When I closed on the sale of my mom’s house, the lawyer said he was happy to do real estate but could never do criminal trial cases, because “you have to be an a-hole.” The loopholes in our legal system are exploited by lawyers but all laws should apply to all people, not just the decent people like Alice who only sees God as her lawyer, judge, and jury. Kevin’s defense of Cullen is making the jury question just because someone is a scumbag, does it make them a killer.
Earlier this week, I heard an interpretation that people get the story of Jekyll and Hyde wrong. The person theorizes that Jekyll was always the bad person but he created Hyde as an alter ego to place the blame on. We live in a society where the more cleancut you are, the more people are willing to believe you are a good person. Milton says that Lindo’s character has a net worth of over $15 million but he lives in a squalor tenement in a Harlem neighborhood.
Pacino and Reeves work well, but I felt Theron’s character was poorly written and her Florida accent isn’t the best. She comes across as a nagging wife. There’s implication that Pam Gerraty (Debra Monk), a paralegal for Kevin may be a demon herself. And Mary Ann hallucinates that she sees Jackie Heath (Tamara Tunie), the wife of Kevin’s colleague, show a demon face at one point. But I’d like to think Jackie herself is a demon working for Milton who enticed her own husband, Leamon (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), into coming into his law firm. Generally, who’s the first person you’re going to turn to when offered a job – your spouse/partner? And if your partner is on board, you accept the job.
Also, Tunie is a wonderful actor/performer whose character is so in love with materialism and appearances, she notes how great people look while at a funeral. This would later be used in American Psycho where the NYC elite are more concerned with appearances and even as he is trying to dispose of a body, Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman has to tell a friend that he got a overnight tote bag from Jean-Paul Gaultier.
As I said, when I first saw this movie, I didn’t like the ending. But around that time I saw The Last Temptation of Christ and finally understood it more. You can blame your actions on Satan but the choice is yours. It’s funny that two years later, Reeves would play Neo in The Matrix in which he is given a choice to accept the truth or continue to live in the fake world. Also, Liar Liar was out on video as well as Jim Carrey is forced to play a lawyer who tells the truth and only the truth. Lawyers love to lie or twist the truth.
We can point the finger at anyone or anything but at the end of the day, we make the decisions and we have to stand by them. At the end of Temptation, Jesus learned an ordinary life wasn’t for him and he had to die on the cross. At the end of Advocate, Kevin realizes if he doesn’t stop, he’s going to lose everything that’s really important to him.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 