banal, pretentious, amateurish.....

Rating: 1/10 (19 December 2009)

So, in this film they pair one of the the greatest actor of all time, Al Pacino, with the worst actor of our generation, Keanu Reeves. The premise is audacious and intriguing : no matter how terrible your crime, no matter how obvious your complicity, Kevin Lomax can save you from conviction. He's a brilliant young criminal defense lawyer with a small problem : he has a conscience, and a very real one. With every case he wins, his personal guilt mounts, because he is all too aware that all his clients were guilty....
Soon, Mr. Lomax gets a call to the big boys' club, in the form of an enormously powerful law firm in New York. He is befriended rather quickly by his new boss, John Milton, a fiery, enigmatic and strangely charming man who always seems to know things the others don't.....
Lomax and Milton's first meeting, on a designer rooftop, is spectacular, both visually and symbolically. There's an elevator scene where Lomax's mother and Milton meet, which is one of the eeriest things I've ever seen. TDA sets itself up beautifully, and then like most other films blows it all to hell. Now who else but a criminal defense lawyer with a perfect record would get a call from Lucifer, right ? It sounds perfect, metaphorically, and it IS perfect, but instead of taking the film in that direction, it turns into a freak show (i.e. cheap-thrill-type horror). Its an engrossing film that runs out of steam just when its getting interesting, and the final act is bizarre and anti-climactic. Too bad. This could have been a truly great Al Pacino film....