Hugely entertaining, Pacino at his best

Rating: Null/10 (13 July 2011)

I love this film.
Keanu Reeves' customary impassiveness is ideally suited to playing an ambitious lawyer with a murky personal history, lured into a fast track to the big time by Al Pacino's law firm boss who, we rapidly realise, is the devil himself (as if the film's title and the character's name of John Milton didn't give us enough clues).
This combination of supernatural thriller and personal drama leads us - and Keanu - up the garden path and down again a number of times until, finally, the long awaited showdown occurs. The movie then resolves in a number of different ways, all of which are completely satisfying.
Everything is good in this film, but pride of place must go to Pacino, playing Milton with a reptilian seductiveness which repels and attracts simultaneously. I can't imagine anyone else playing the part half as effectively.