Paint it, Black

Rating: 7/10 (23 September 2012)

***SPIOLERS*** Running up a streak of 64 straight wins without a loss in the courts suppressing even the late great World Heavyweight Champ Rocky Marciano's record of 49 and zip in the boxing ring it was a given that handsome and successful Gainesville Florida defense attorney Kevin Lomax, Keanu Reeves, will hit the big time a lot sooner then later. It doesn't take long for Kevin to be contacted by a representative of this top New York City shyster firm Milton Chadwick & Waters to work for it in picking juries among other things. What the starstruck and naive Kevin doesn't quit get is that there's far more behind his string of good luck, as a defense attorney, then meets the eye. And that has to do with the firms oddball and creepy president John Milton, Al Pacino. It's Milton who without Kevin realizing it has been guiding his super successful career since he was in diapers!
Picking up where he left off back in Gainesville Kevin's amazing success starts to interfere with his relationship with his wife Mary-Ann, Charlize Theron, who's being a small town country girl is not used to the glitter and high life of the Big Apple or NYC. This soon leads Mary-Ann to suffer deep emotional problems with her husband alway away, night & day, on his job getting clients favorable verdicts. It's when Kevin takes on the case of big time NYC real estate mogul Alexander Cullen, Craig T. Nelson, who's been indited in a triple murder, one of the victims being his wife, that things really start getting out of hand! With Kavin obsessed with his clients upcoming trail Mary-Ann feeling alone and deserted by Kevin at her greatest time of need is driven to suffer a major nervous breakdown. That after among other things,like the strange and creeped out people whom Kevin works with, she discovered that she's unable to have children which was very probably due to the stress she's been going through. This eventually leads to her being institutionalized and in a fit of insanity kill herself by slashing her throat with a Price of broken glass right in front of her shocked and helpless husband Kevin who's unable to save her life!
***SPOILERS*** Not that that's the only big surprise that the by now ready for a straight-jacket Kevin gets hit with a much bigger one is waiting for him on the on deck circle! It's the revelation that his ultra religious Evangelical Christian mom Alice, Judith Lvey, who came to visit him and Mary-Ann in fact knew his boss John Milton back in 1966! That's when she was a teenager on a visit to NYC! By now it becomes very evident in both Kevin and the audience minds what's really behind all this success that Kevin has been having! And even far more sinister what's the price that he'll eventually have to pay for it!
***MAJOR SPOILER*** Really freaked out ending that has Kevin finally realize that their a price to pay for his amazing success which is far more then he can come up with. Super trick surprise ending has Kevin rewind his life back to Gainsvelle Florida to correct the mistakes that he made by leaving town that ended with, among other tragedies, the suicide of his wife Mary-Ann. Or so what we and Kevin thought!