The Devil's Advocate

The hook is blunt and theatrical: Kevin Lomax is a defence lawyer who has never lost. That unbeaten streak is what pulls him from Gainesville into a very different world — a New York law firm that promises money, stature and the sort of cases that make headlines.

Taylor Hackford directs a near‑two‑and‑a‑half hour film that deliberately mixes genres — legal thriller, supernatural horror, domestic tragedy — and asks the audience to keep up as the stakes expand from a courtroom to a marriage to something darker at the centre of the firm. People still name‑check the movie because it keeps one foot in everyday moral choices — sleepless hours, a wife’s deteriorating mind, the temptation to defend clients you suspect are guilty — while the other foot is planted in a very theatrical idea of evil. That odd balance is what makes it hard to forget.

At its simplest: a Southern lawyer with a spotless record is plucked out of familiar territory and invited to play in the big leagues. The job offer — from the charismatic head of a prestigious New York firm — is the kind of break that changes everything.

On arrival the practical cost is immediate: Kevin works longer, he sees less of his wife, and ordinary domestic pressures begin to crowd the edges of the career story. That personal strain matters because it’s where the film chooses to focus its suspense.

Meanwhile, Mary Ann begins to experience terrifying visions and nightmares that the film treats as real signs the family is unravelling. Those sequences shift the story away from courtroom puzzles and toward questions about belief, mental health and what happens when a home stops being safe.

The setup works because the professional seduction — success, cases that mean influence and money — collides with very human loss. The film keeps asking: what do you do when the thing that made you feel powerful starts costing you the people you love?

The film’s antagonist arrives both as a high‑powered firm head and, eventually, as something much more literal. That doubling — a figure who runs a law practice and also embodies a classical, satanic presence — pushes the movie into its most unsettling territory.

Satan functions here less as a mythic boogeyman and more as a catalyst. The revelation that Milton is Kevin’s father reframes earlier scenes about ambition and loyalty: suddenly those career choices look like choices inside a family drama, not just professional advancement.

The story leans into family in a way that keeps the horror personal. Milton’s plans — including the revelation about Kevin’s half‑sister and an agenda that reaches into lineage and legacy — make the threat feel intimate rather than abstract.

Finally, the character’s presence forces the central question: who is responsible for the damage — the manipulator or the person who keeps taking the deal? The film answers by insisting both have parts to play, which is why Milton/Satan remains the movie’s pressure point.

On the surface it’s a courtroom story with supernatural shocks. Beneath that, the recurring concerns are straightforward and human: family, loss and what people believe when ordinary explanations fail.

Family is the engine. Kevin’s choices ripple outward — from his relationship with his wife to a buried paternal secret — so the film reads as much like a domestic tragedy as it does a genre picture.

Loss appears in several guises: the slow erosion of Mary Ann’s mental stability, the removal of future possibilities when a doctor declares infertility, and the damage done when career ambition replaces companionship. Supernatural belief threads those losses together. The movie asks whether some events are supernatural or merely the external shape of human cruelty and neglect — and it refuses to give a neat answer, which keeps the uneasy mood in play.

Released in 1997, the film sits at the end of a decade that liked mixing things up. It borrows the brisk plotting of 90s legal thrillers but grafts on the more heightened impulses of supernatural and satanic tales.

That genre mashup is very of its time: filmmakers then were comfortable letting procedural setups bleed into moral melodrama. The Devil's Advocate wears both influences — courtroom mechanics and personal catastrophe — without apologising for either.

Being a late‑90s picture also means it has the patience for a long runtime. The film takes time to move from professional temptation to family collapse, which lets the horror feel earned rather than tacked on.

So while it isn’t a nostalgia piece, its structure and taste for genre‑crossing mark it as a product of the decade: confident, occasionally theatrical and willing to make a broad, sometimes messy argument about sin and success.

People remember the movie because it stages uncomfortable truths inside familiar setups. Kevin’s unbeaten record and the ruthless tactics he uses — attacking a victim’s credibility to win — turn the legal victory into something morally ambiguous, and that ambiguity sticks with you.

The domestic fallout is another reason the film lingers. Mary Ann’s visions, the declaration of infertility and her eventual breakdown keep the audience anchored in the human cost of Kevin’s ambition. It’s not just about winning; it’s about what you trade for it.

Then there’s the larger moral coda: when Milton finally tells Kevin he only ‘set the stage,’ the film forces an admission that choices mattered. Kevin’s realisation that he wanted to win regardless of cost is the narrative’s sharpest, cruellest pivot.

And for many viewers the final, strange beats — the reversal that returns Kevin to a courthouse moment and the unsettling transformation that closes the film — are what make it memorable. It wraps moral questions and supernatural spectacle into a package that’s hard to shake off.

If you come for a straight legal thriller, it will surprise you. If you come for a personal drama about marriage and ambition, it will give you that too. The film works best when it lets those two tracks collide — when Kevin’s unblemished record and his moral compromises feel like the same thing.

The theatrical gestures and supernatural reveals are deliberate: they turn private failure into a mythic contest. Milton’s role as both firm head and a satanic figure reframes career temptation as a family betrayal, which keeps the stakes emotionally immediate.

At 143 minutes the film asks for patience, and it usually repays it when you care about the characters. The payoff isn’t tidy; it insists the viewer sit with guilt, loss and the idea that being tempted is not the same as being forced. So should you watch it now? Yes — if you like films that mix a moral dilemma with genre thrills and don’t mind a dramatic flourish or two. It’s not subtle, but it’s purposeful, and it still has the power to unsettle the way only stories about family and ambition can.