Remember that Monty Python sketch where a quiz show host offers a poke in the eye with a blunt stick as a prize? Well, if I were offered the choice between the poke in the eye or to see Devil's Advocate again, I would really have to ponder my decision. The blunt stick striking my cornea might hurt more initially, but at least it would be over with quickly, while Devil's Advocate drags on for 2 hours and 18 minutes, and by the end of that seeming eternity the film is so labored I'd almost sell my soul to make it stop.

        There are many clues to indicate why this film is a dud. Keanu Reeves plays Kevin Lomax, a slick young lawyer in Gainesville, Florida, and this gator is notorious in his own swamp for never having lost a case. The opening scene introduces us to one of the despicable critters Lomax defends: a middle-school teacher facing pedophile charges who cannot hide his sexual excitement while his victim is testifying in court.

        It's hard to say which is more repulsive here: the pride of the pedophile or director Taylor Hackford's decision to show him furtively slide his hand inside his pants during the damning testimony. Lomax wins this case, even though he knows his client is guilty, and the success of this case, plus others, attracts an offer from a prestigious NY legal firm. Lomax, with pretty young bubble head wife in tow go racing off to the big apple to the accompaniment of his God-fearing mother's cries of "Sodom and Gomorrah."

        This exercise in excess occupies the first twenty minutes of the film, and from here the remaining 2 hours just burrow further and further into a self-indulgent abyss. Al Pacino is John Milton, the head of the NY law firm. Milton never sleeps, speaks multiple languages, predicts the present and the future, kills people by auto suggestion, and has the ability to be in more than one place at one time. And, you'll never guess, it is revealed that Milton is Satan!!! NO! You don't say!

        Just in case you miss the point of this movie (which is as subtle as being hit repeatedly over the head with a 2 x 4) the climax features the most ludicrous scene you might ever hope to see, where a 60 foot mural comes to life as a surreal orgy. You just have to laugh.

        In conclusion, Devil's Advocate is the cinematic equivalent of a fire and brimstone preacher who is completely out of control. If you decide to see this film it would have to be out of incredulity that such anti-smaltz can exist. Well, no, that's not quite the whole truth, Pacino does have a few inspired moments, but it hardly makes up for the 138 minutes of torture.

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