Somewhere between brilliant and cheap lies The Devil's Advocate.

Rating: Null/10 (16 April 2000)

The Devil's Advocate has a number of things going for it. Keanu Reeves does surprisingly well at not offending in his lead role here. Al Pacino makes it almost easy to like his character. Charlize Theron is absolutely stunning in her role, and milks the role of all its dramatic possibilities. The sets are beautiful, the movie is well-filmed, and the script is mostly intricate and involving. The film mostly suffers from only a few minor problems, including some distractingly unnecessary nudity. What, then, is this film's biggest problem? Its ending! A cheaper, more insulting, and outright unfair ending has not existed in a recent movie as far as I'm concerned. The tension and drama in the film build, and it works on making its point, for over two hours, only to be completely derailed and ignored in the last five minutes. As a result, I cannot recommend this film to anyone... A movie that improves after a few poor opening minutes is still worthwhile, but a movie that has everything going for it, only to throw it away when it should have hit a home run, is without a doubt one of the seven deadly sins of filmmaking.