The Devil's Advocate

Director: Taylor Hackford

1997 / 144min / 35mm

Keanu Reeves adopts a Wall Street slickback in Hackford’s seamy, deliciously over-the-top morality tale, playing Kevin Lomax, an up-and-coming lawyer based in Gainesville, Florida, who uproots wife Charlize Theron and heads for the Big Apple when opportunity comes knocking, there to be taken under the wing of one John Milton (Al Pacino, masticating scenery with aplomb), the head of a powerful Manhattan firm who also happens to be Satan himself, offering callow Kevin the world for the small price of his soul. The plummy performances, lifestyle porn production design by Bruno Rubeo, and scrumptiously scurrilous screenplay by Hackford and Tony Gilroy, adapting Andrew Neiderman’s the novel of the same name, all combine to make The Devil’s Advocate a sinfully enjoyable concoction.

Distributor: Park Circus