10/17/97
MOVIE REVIEW: The Devil's Advocate
Too many clues bedevil 'Advocate'

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**1/2 (out of five)
Starring Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino, Charlize Theron, Jeffrey Jones, Judith Ivey, Craig T. Nelson. A Warner Bros. release written by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy, directed by Taylor Hackford. Rated R, contains violence, sex, nudity, profanity. Running time: 144 minutes.

The Devil's Advocate is about a Southern lawyer who gets hired by a big New York law firm only to discover to his discomfort that his boss may have underworld -- and I don't mean the Al Capone kind -- connections.

With its many courtroom cases that encompass everything from triple homicide to the voodoo slaying of a goat, it's sort of like a John Grisham story tied to a knock-off of Rosemary's Baby. Only it's not as creepy nor as much fun as Rosemary's Baby -- and that's a big part of the problem with The Devil's Advocate.

Something played out on such a grand scale on enormous sets with the likes of Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino and with a supernatural plot should have an Omen-ish sense of menace and foreboding. It should make us tremble and quiver and turn to jelly in our seats.

But the clues to the real identity of Pacino's wheeler-dealer lawyer John Milton (named for the 17th century author of Paradise Lost . . . and that's a clue in itself) are given away not only in the movie's trailers, but its title. "I'm a surprise . . . they don't see me coming," coos the suave Milton. But we do.

Director Taylor Hackford (An Officer and a Gentleman) parcels out the film's thrills painstakingly as we must wade through courtroom trial after courtroom trial, most of which are only peripherally attached to the main story of how one man's vanity threatens to cost him his soul and his family.

Actually, a little more than halfway through The Devil's Advocate, a clue that's about as subtle as a sledgehammer twhacked its way across the story and I figured out the film's major surprise. Most of the rest of the film was then spent waiting for the other shoe to drop. It did, eventually and predictably and talkily.

The "shocker surprise" isn't the end of the movie, however. Beyond that point the script serves up a mind-numbing jolt for a finale that's both surprising and laughable. It's the hoariest of plot twists, something that's only made bearable by an added-on twist at the very end.

But by that time, The Devil's Advocate has run more than 2 hours and 15 minutes and you might be squirming in your seat saying, "Enough already!"

Gets guilty clients off

Reeves plays a Florida lawyer who has won every single one of his difficult cases, usually defending patently guilty clients involved in awful crimes. At the start, Reeves's Kevin Lomax is in court demolishing a frightened girl on the witness stand after she has accused a teacher of molesting her.

Such courtroom wizardry wins the attention of the mysterious Milton, head of a giant New York firm. Soon Lomax is being courted by the ever-smiling Milton, who offers him not only a slot at the firm but also a fancy apartment and lots of money, a very heavy workload and the most difficult cases. There's a reason for all this, but it only becomes apparent late in the film.

Lomax's workaholic hours begin driving a wedge between him and his lovely and vivacious wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron), who also falls under the spell of Milton. She changes her appearance. And she begins to see her new friends for the monsters they are . . . quite literally when their faces melt into ghoulish visages. Is she going nuts or is there really something to it all?

Theron brings the right smart sass to Mary Ann at the start, which makes her descent into the world of demons seem all the more terrible. She has the film's only really frightening moment, when she hears a strange noise in her apartment alone at night, which leads to a creepy discovery.

A multi-faceted hero

Reeves has the brashness and boldness and forthrightness of Lomax down pat. He may win cases for lowlifes, but he does have a respect for the law, which makes this character nicely multi-faceted. With his feet-of-clay feet on the ground, Reeves makes him an attractive character who has gotten in too deep.

Pacino tosses in so many devilish grins that I wondered whether he was trying to show off a new upper plate. We've almost never seen him smile on screen before. It's pretty dazzling and yet a little scary. Is there anyone else who could make such a toothy facade look so ominous?

It's a gregarious performance that grows and grows the longer it goes on until at the end, he fills the screen and overwhelms everything else. Considering the character he's playing, it gels beautifully.

Speaking of tremendous, Bruno Rubeo's sets are worth the price of admission. There's a fantastic pool on the roof of a skyscraper that ends in a waterfall over the edge. Must be pretty soggy on the street below. Milton's enormous apartment features a huge sculpture over a giant fireplace (there are a lot of fireplaces, all with roaring fires) that figures in the film's fiery special-effects ending.

Sometimes, in fact, the sets are more interesting than what's happening between the actors.