The Devil's Advocate

About the film

Contains story spoilers.

The Devil’s Advocate makes professional success feel dangerous before its supernatural explanation becomes explicit. Kevin Lomax knows how to win, and he has begun treating an unbroken record as evidence of his own worth. That gives John Milton a point of entry. The new employer does not need to invent Kevin’s ambition; he supplies a world in which ambition receives money, access and flattering attention. Taylor Hackford’s film lets the legal thriller and the horror story occupy that same structure. A tempting job becomes a route into a more disturbing form of dependence, with the rewards arriving before Kevin understands what accepting them has already encouraged him to disregard.

Keanu Reeves’s Kevin brings courtroom confidence into situations where confidence is a poor substitute for judgment. The professional skill is real, making his decisions more troubling than those of somebody who simply cannot understand the case before him. He can recognize a problem and still decide that winning matters more. The film builds its account of temptation around that separation between knowledge and conduct. Milton can provide a setting and a reward, but Kevin supplies the choice. This keeps the extravagant supernatural world attached to decisions that initially look mundane: taking another assignment, staying at work longer and treating a concern at home as an interruption rather than a reason to reconsider.

Kevin knowingly wins an acquittal for a guilty teacher before joining Milton’s New York firm with wife Mary Ann. He neglects her distress while defending billionaire Alex Cullen, again using testimony he knows is false. Mary Ann reports that Milton assaulted her; Kevin dismisses the claim because Milton was with him in court. She later dies by suicide. Kevin’s mother reveals that Milton is his father, and Milton identifies himself as Satan. He wants Kevin and his half-sister Christabella to conceive an Antichrist. Kevin defeats that immediate plan by shooting himself. The story returns him to the Florida trial, where he refuses to continue representing the teacher. A reporter offers fame for that refusal, and Kevin agrees to an interview. Afterward, the reporter takes Milton’s appearance, showing that temptation has survived by changing the reward it offers rather than repeating the same professional bargain.

Mary Ann experiences the new life through a different set of spaces and expectations. The apartment promises comfort while separating her from familiar relationships, and the social world around the firm makes belonging seem dependent on accepting its terms. Charlize Theron’s character encounters disturbing images that Kevin is not willing to treat as knowledge. His success gives his explanation of events an apparent authority her fear cannot easily challenge. The horror grows from that imbalance as well as from the demonic visions themselves. A person can be visibly distressed and still find that the person closest to her has decided what her distress must mean before listening to its account.

Al Pacino’s Milton uses intimacy and theatricality together. He can seem available, amused and personally interested in the young lawyer, making the scale of his power less obvious than the extravagant office surrounding him. His attention feels like recognition. That is part of the danger: Kevin is offered a version of himself that confirms what he already wants to believe. Pacino’s movement between genial conversation and expansive declaration gives the character two ways to occupy a scene. He can reduce the distance between employer and employee, then reveal how much of the environment he commands. The familiarity does not place them on equal terms; it makes unequal terms easier for Kevin to accept.

Manhattan’s height and polished interiors give the bargain a physical form. Moving upward through the firm looks like escaping ordinary constraints, while the expanding view can make people below seem remote. Kevin’s attention narrows even as his material surroundings grow larger. Hackford sets that professional ascent beside Mary Ann’s increasing isolation, so the same apparent improvement produces different experiences within the marriage. The city is also a world of audiences: clients, colleagues and observers supply constant opportunities to be seen succeeding. Kevin’s record becomes an image he must preserve, encouraging him to defend the image whenever another person’s needs threaten to disturb it. The final temptation uses that need for an audience more directly than the job did.

The return to the opening trial changes the meaning of a second chance. Kevin can refuse the conduct he previously chose, but refusing does not automatically end his desire to be admired for his choice. The film locates its continuing danger in that distinction, allowing a visibly better decision to carry another vulnerability. Its supernatural ending therefore returns to the professional problem that began the story: what a person wants their success to prove about them. The courtroom offers a public measure of victory, while the marriage requires forms of attention that no verdict can award. Milton’s changing appearance leaves the central temptation mobile, able to meet Kevin wherever recognition seems ready to follow.