The Devil’s Advocate (1997)

Summary: Kevin Lomax is a very successful young Florida lawyer, who is offered a job with a high power New York law firm headed by the charismatic John Milton. He is given the difficult case of defending a billionaire who is accused of killing his wife, stepdaughter and a maid and as a result neglects his young wife Mary Ann. She is chaperoned by other wives but begins to see that they might be…what? Demons. When she and Kevin have sex he seems to hallucinate that he is actually having sex with Christabella a fellow lawyer. We, the audience, see John Milton, the head of the firm engaging in what can only be supernatural activity, and things come to a head when Kevin finds Mary Ann in a church claiming that she has been raped by Milton, when Kevin has seen him in court at the same time. She is sectioned and locked up, and it is not long before Milton is lecturing Kevin about free will, but what else can happen?

Content: This film has strong sexual overtones right from the start, when a child is required to describe the manner in which she has been molested in court, and we see that it has excited the accused. There is quite a bit of sex and some of the young women in the cast reveal all. There is an extensive sculpture in Milton’s apartment which portrays naked people who become sexually engaged with each other at times.  Also quite a bit of drinking at social gatherings, but no drug taking. People are killed in a variety of ways, obviously at the behest of Milton, who is, we never have any doubt, the Devil.

A View: The title says it all really. We know that John Milton is the devil, so what can happen from then on and will Kevin survive, particularly when we see that Mary Ann doesn’t. It is all wildly over the top, and we learn from the trivia that Al Pacino had turned the role down on three previous occasions when he judged that the intended special effects were over the top. When they wanted a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, but in very bad taste Trump offered them his. I am tempted to say that this film is a lot of fun, which despite the alarming events presented at times, it is, particularly if you watch it to the very end.

Tony Gilroy, who was involved in the writing of this outing is best known for his penning of the Bourne scripts. Other films of his reviewed on this site include: Bait and Beirut