The Devil's Advocate (marketed as Devil's Advocate) is a 1997 supernatural horror film directed by Taylor Hackford, written by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy, and starring Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino and Charlize Theron. Based on Andrew Neiderman's 1990 novel, it is about a gifted young Florida lawyer invited to work for a major New York City law firm. As his wife becomes haunted by frightening visions, the lawyer slowly realizes the firm's owner, John Milton, is the Devil. The film is an international co-production between the United States and Germany.
The name John Milton is one of several allusions to Paradise Lost, as well as to Dante Alighieri's Inferno and the legend of Faust. An adaptation of Neiderman's novel went into a development hell during the 1990s, with Hackford gaining control of the production. Filming took place around New York City and Florida.
The Devil's Advocate was released by Warner Bros. on October 17, 1997. The film received mixed reviews, with critics crediting it for entertainment value and Pacino's performance. It grossed $153 million at the box office and won the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film. It also became the subject of the copyright lawsuit Hart v. Warner Bros., Inc. for its visual art.
Plot Kevin Lomax is a defense attorney based in Gainesville, Florida who has never lost a case. While defending schoolteacher Lloyd Gettys against a charge of child molestation, he realizes his client is guilty. He proceeds with his defense, destroying the victim's credibility through a harsh cross-examination and securing an acquittal for Gettys.
A New York City law firm asks Kevin to assist them with a jury selection. The head of the firm, John Milton, offers Kevin a job, and he and his wife Mary Ann move to Manhattan. Kevin is soon working long hours and neglecting Mary Ann.
Kevin is assigned to represent billionaire Alex Cullen, who is accused of murdering his wife, his stepson, and a maid. As a result, he sees even less of Mary Ann and fantasizes about his co-worker Christabella. Meanwhile, Mary Ann has demonic visions and has a nightmare about a baby playing with her removed ovaries. A doctor declares her to be infertile. Milton suggests Kevin step down from the trial to care for Mary Ann's deteriorating mental health, but Kevin thinks he will resent her for costing him the case.
Eddie Barzoon, the firm's managing partner, discovers Kevin's name on the firm's charter and believes that Kevin covets his job. Eddie threatens to inform the United States Attorney's office of the firm's dubious activities, and Kevin tells Milton. Although Milton seems to dismiss Kevin's concerns, Barzoon is beaten to death in Central Park.
Preparing Melissa Black, Alex Cullen's secretary, to testify, Kevin realizes she is lying to give Cullen a false alibi. He tells Milton he thinks Cullen is guilty, but Milton offers to support him anyway. Kevin proceeds, winning an acquittal with Black's perjured testimony. Mary Ann claims Milton raped her that day and shows Kevin her body covered with cuts. Knowing that Milton was in court with him, Kevin believes her to be mentally ill and harming herself. He admits her into a psychiatric institution.
United States Department of Justice agent Mitch Weaver, who is investigating the clandestine activities of Milton's firm, warns Kevin that Milton is corrupt and reveals that Gettys, acquitted in Florida thanks to Kevin, has been arrested for killing a young girl. Moments later, Weaver is struck by a car and killed.
Kevin, his Christian fundamentalist mother Alice, and his case manager Pam, visit Mary Ann at the institution. Envisioning Pam as a demon, Mary Ann kills herself. Alice tearfully reveals that Milton is Kevin's father. Kevin confronts Milton, who admits to raping Mary Ann. He shoots Milton, but the bullets do not harm him. Milton reveals that he is Satan.
Kevin blames Milton for everything, but Milton points out he merely "set the stage". It was Kevin who chose to neglect his wife and defend people he knew were guilty. Kevin realizes he always wanted to win, regardless of the cost. Milton reveals that Christabella is Kevin's half-sister and he wants the two of them to conceive the Antichrist. Kevin appears to acquiesce but abruptly shoots himself in the head. Milton's demonic rage burns Christabella alive, and he turns into a winged angel that resembles Kevin.
Kevin finds himself back at the Gainesville courthouse during the recess of the Gettys trial. He returns to the courtroom and sees that Mary Ann is alive and well. When the trial resumes, he announces that he cannot represent his client, despite the risk of disbarment. His reporter friend Larry offers to do a high-profile interview with him, promising to make him famous. Encouraged by Mary Ann, Kevin agrees.
After they leave, Larry transforms into Milton, who breaks the fourth wall and declares, "Vanity — definitely my favorite sin."
Cast
In addition, Neal Jones portrays Larry, the Florida reporter who morphs into Satan at the end of the film, while brief cameo appearances, as themselves, include Don King and Senator Al D'Amato.
Themes and interpretations
The Devil character's name is a direct homage to John Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost, quoted by Lomax with the line, "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n". Despite this, the thrust of Milton's epic was to rebuke the devil. As a rebel against God, complaining of being perpetually "underestimated", the Milton character, like Paradise Losts Satan, is "Heav'n running from Heav'n" with a "sense of injur'd merit".
Professor Eric C. Brown judges the climax, in which Milton attempts to persuade Lomax to have sex with his half-sister to conceive the Antichrist, to be the most "Miltonic", as the sculptures become animated in carnal activities evoking Paradise Losts "Downfall of the Rebel Angels". The tirade Milton gives in this sequence is also reminiscent of Satan's lines in Paradise Lost, Books I and II. In U.S. literary education, Milton's temptation of Lomax in the climax, in which he rationalizes rebellion against God for a "look-but-don't-touch" model, has been compared to Satan urging Eve to eat forbidden fruit in Paradise Lost, Book IX, lines 720–730:
In his DVD commentary, Taylor Hackford did not name Paradise Lost as an inspiration, instead citing the legend of Faust. An underlying concept of the story is a "Faustian bargain", offered to a character with free will. Philosopher Peter van Inwagen writes that Milton referring to free will as a "bitch" when Lomax contemplates selling his soul moves away from a legalistic definition of "free will" as "uncoerced" into the philosophical realm of its definition.
As with Goethe's Faust, the Devil that is commonly depicted in cinema is associated with lust and temptation. Milton shows Lomax many seductive women to induce his "fall". Sex or rape is usually also the means by which Satan creates the Antichrist, as in Roman Polanski's 1968 film Rosemary's Baby. In The Devil's Advocate, someone other than Satan will have sex to conceive the Antichrist, although Milton nevertheless brutally rapes Mary Ann. Incest becomes a way of creating the Antichrist, for the offspring of Satan's son and daughter will inherit much of Satan's genetic makeup.
Dante Alighieri's Inferno raised "visual potential" that informed the film. Dantean scholar Amilcare A. Iannucci argues the plot follows the model of the Divine Comedy in beginning with selva oscura, with Lomax losing his conscience defending a guilty man, and entering and exploring deeper circles of Hell.
Iannucci compares the office building structure to the circles, listing fireplaces where flames are always present; demonic visual phenomena; and water outside of Milton's office, analogized to Dante's Satan's icy home, albeit situated at the top of Hell, as opposed to the bottom. Free will is also a major theme in the Divine Comedy, with the film's musings on the concept being similar to Dante's Purgatorio, 16.82–83 ("if the present world has gone astray, in you is the cause, in you it's to be sought").
Other religious references are present. In describing New York City as Babylon, Alice Lomax invokes Revelation 18:
Milton tempting Lomax is also possibly inspired by the Biblical Temptation of Christ. Aside from Milton, other character names have been commented on: Author Kelly J. Wyman matches Mary Ann, the virginal figure who falls victim to Milton, to the Virgin Mary, and adds the literal translation of Christabella is "Beautiful Christ", and that the title refers to the Catholic Church's Devil's advocates and lawyers as advocates; Eric C. Brown finds Barzoon's name and character to be reminiscent of the demon prince Beelzebub. Scholars Miguel A. De La Torre and Albert Hernández observe the vision of Satan as CEO, wearing expensive clothing and engaging in business, had appeared in popular culture before, including the 1942 novel The Screwtape Letters.
Production Development
Andrew Neiderman wrote The Devil's Advocate as a novel, and it was published in 1990 by Simon and Schuster. Believing that his story could be adapted into a film, Neiderman approached Warner Bros. Pictures and claimed to have led his successful sale with the synopsis, "It's about a law firm in New York that represents only guilty people, and never loses".
Various screenplay adaptations of The Devil's Advocate were pitched to U.S. cinema studios, with Joel Schumacher planned to direct it, with Brad Pitt as the young lawyer. Schumacher planned a sequence in which Pitt would descend into the New York subway system that would be modeled on the circles of hell in Dante's Divine Comedy. With no actor to play Satan, this project collapsed.
The O.J. Simpson murder trial and its controversial outcome gave new impetus to relaunching the project, with a $60 million budget. Warner Bros. hired Taylor Hackford to direct the new attempt. The director embraced the legal drama aspect, theorizing, "The courtroom has become the gladiator arena of the late twentieth century. Following the progress of a sensational trial is a spectator sport."
Tony Gilroy led much of the rewrite with supervision by Hackford, who envisioned it as "a modern-day morality play" and "Faustian tale". As the screenplay developed, free-will became a theme in which Milton does not actually cause events. Hackford wanted suggestions that Milton does not kill Barzoon as he defied his muggers, or United States Attorney Weaver, who arrogantly did not watch for vehicles before stepping onto the road.
The screenwriters added the plot element that Lomax was Milton's son, and that Milton could produce the Antichrist, neither of which are in the novel. Hackford cited the films Rosemary's Baby and The Omen as influences, and both had explored the Antichrist mythology. Another change from the novel was converting the book's lesbian client to the pedophile Lloyd Gettys, avoiding undertones of homophobia. In an early version of the screenplay, the "better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" quotation is given to Milton rather than Lomax.
Casting Al Pacino was previously offered the role of the Devil in an attempt to adapt Neiderman's novel, but before final rewrites, he rejected it on three occasions, because of the clichéd nature of the character. Pacino suggested Robert Redford and Sean Connery for the role. Keanu Reeves chose to star in The Devil's Advocate instead of Speed 2, despite a promised $11 million for the sequel to his 1994 hit Speed. According to Reeves's staff, the actor was averse to performing in two consecutive action films after Chain Reaction (1996). On The Devil's Advocate, Reeves agreed to a pay cut worth millions of dollars so that the producers could meet Pacino's salary demands. To prepare for the role, Pacino watched the 1941 film The Devil and Daniel Webster and observed tips from Walter Huston as Mr. Scratch. He also read Dante's Inferno and Paradise Lost.