Pacino goes OVER the TOP!!

Rating: Null/10 (28 April 2000)

At first this movie seemed like a decently-made, moderately realistic portrayal of the conflicts in the life of young defense lawyer, marred only by the casting of Keanu Reeves as an intelligent person. But as soon as he's hired away to New York by big shot Al Pacino, things begin to get more interesting... no, make that more melodramatic.
For the first hour or two the movie keeps a good tension going as Keanu and wife Charlize Theron find their values, integrity and happiness stripped away one temptation at a time; and their seemingly perfect lives slowly become a living hell. But it's about the time that it becomes obvious that everyone around them is already there that the movie begins to slowly inch over the top. About when Charlize had hallucinations and whined "they stole my ovaries!", and Keanu attended a funeral where his co-workers groped each other instead of mourning, and Pacino made some Holy Water boil and laughed like Boris Karloff ("Bwhahahahahahahaha!!") at the ceiling... I stopped thinking about issues of temptation and started giggling - and that was just when the movie got lively.
Pacino comes into his own in the last half hour, proving again that there's nothing on Earth more watchable that a big ham actor having the time of his life. He doesn't take it at all seriously, this where he has center stage and all his best lines, and he booms them out with fervid amusement. I've never seen him overact so badly except in "Looking for Richard" (where he ably demonstrated why nobody's paying him to play Shakespeare), and there the excessive broadness could be excused on the grounds that he really filming a stage role. No excuses this time, it's just plain overacting! As for the other performances, they range from competent to Keanu Reeves. As for the lovely Keanu... I will only say that he... cannot hold his own against the raging torrent that is Pacino, and that the dreadful bogus Southern accent doesn't help him to appear to have more than two neurons to rub together.
And just when you were having some major fun with Pacino ... you're deflated by the kind of tacked-on ending that studios insist on when they think the story's right and natural ending will hurt the box-office. Still, worth a look if you want to be entertained.