Devil's Advocate

MPAA Rating

R

Theatrical Release Date

Oct 16, 1997

Genre(s)

• Occult
• Suspense
• Mystery
• Drama
• Horror

Rating (Stars)

Description

Too old for Hamlet and too young for Lear--what's an ambitious actor to do? Play the Devil, of course. Jack Nicholson did it in The Witches of Eastwick; Robert De Niro did it in Angel Heart (as Louis Cyphre--get it?). In The Devil's Advocate Al Pacino takes his turn as the great Satan, and clearly relishes his chance to raise hell. He's a New York lawyer, of course, by the name of John Milton, who recruits a hotshot young Florida attorney (Keanu Reeves) to his firm and seduces him with tempting offers of power, sex, and money. Think of the story as a twist on John Grisham's The Firm, with the corporate evil made even more explicit. Reeves is wooden, and therefore doesn't seem to have much of a soul to lose, but he's really just our excuse to meet the devil. Pacino's the main attraction, gleefully showing off his--and the Antichrist's--chops at perpetrating menace and mayhem. The film was directed by Taylor Hackford (Against All Odds, Dolores Claiborne), who provides alternate-track commentary for the movie itself, plus a dozen deleted scenes. Also note: due to a settlement with artist Frederick Hart over the movie's use of a sculpture resembling his Ex Nihilo in Washington's National Cathedral, future releases of the film will be altered. --Jim Emerson

Director

Taylor Hackford

Stars

• Keanu Reeves
• Al Pacino
• Charlize Theron
• Jeffrey Jones
• Judith Ivey

Running Time

144 minutes

Original Price

$14.97

Current Value

$3.25

DVD Features

• AC-3
• Anamorphic
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• Dolby
• DVD-Video
• Widescreen
• NTSC
• 2.35:1