Comments: Special Edition

Summary: Too old for Hamlet and too young for Lear--what's an ambitious actor to do? Play the Devil, of course. Jack Nicholson did it in "The Witches of Eastwick"; Robert De Niro did it in "Angel Heart" (as Louis Cyphre--get it?). In "The Devil's Advocate" Al Pacino takes his turn as the great Satan, and clearly relishes his chance to raise hell. He's a New York lawyer, of course, by the name of John Milton, who recruits a hotshot young Florida attorney (Keanu Reeves) to his firm and seduces him with tempting offers of power, sex, and money. Think of the story as a twist on John Grisham's "The Firm", with the corporate evil made even more explicit. Reeves is wooden, and therefore doesn't seem to have much of a soul to lose, but he's really just our excuse to meet the devil. Pacino's the main attraction, gleefully showing off his--and the Antichrist's--chops at perpetrating menace and mayhem. The film was directed by Taylor Hackford ("Against All Odds", "Dolores Claiborne"), who provides alternate-track commentary for the movie itself, plus a dozen deleted scenes. Also note: due to a settlement with artist Frederick Hart over the movie's use of a sculpture resembling his "Ex Nihilo" in Washington's National Cathedral, future releases of the film will be altered. "--Jim Emerson"