Could have been MUCH better.

Rating: 6/10 (22 March 2001)

*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***
The Devils Advocate is, basically, a very good idea gone wrong. The whole thing about casting Pacino as a devil -ish businessman is very interesting, and the movie could have been great if it tried to be a tense psychological drama; rather, the movie basically failed to think about its direction. There was an attempt at psychological drama played on Keanu Reeves' side, but it basically got completely lost in cheap attempts at horror effects (devil faces becoming visible) and gratuitous violence that, instead of being relevant to the plot, failed to stay connected to the main theme. As a matter of fact in the end there's an attempt at connecting the rather disjointed events by using a "vision" thing. However this trick seems rather inappropriate and, if anything, made the movie even cheaper.
Pacino is great, and delivers here one of his best performances ever. Charismatic and scary at the same time in his raspy, deep voice, he is definitely what saved the movie from being an utter failure.
On the other side, Keanu Reeves is worse than usual (that being already not an easy task). It seems almost laughable that such an un-charismatic character and weak spokesman could be such a good lawyer. I'm not even sure if Reeves tried to sound southern American, but his performance comes out downright laughable. There's a scene in the movie where he's supposed to be crying in desperation but his attempt at that was so awful I almost burst out laughing. I felt he was a very odd choice for this kind of character, especially because he was supposed to be the character that we should identify with or at least care for. I did neither.
There's actually, an extremely good and gripping part in the movie, that being the 10 minutes before our fellow advocate meets the devil after discovering his true identity. Gripping and tense. But what happens after... nothing... the whole tension deflates miserably... too bad.
As I said... it could have been great, but it wasn't that good...
6/10