I alway forget what a masterpiece of social commentary is Taylor Hackford's The Devil's Advocate (1997) on top of everything else that makes it a first-tier Satanic thriller that deftly skewers the "me-first" greed and conspicuous consumption that defined the 1980s, and the fetishization of lawyers, in the same way that Wall Street levelled the cult of insider trading. There are some tour-de-force performances, most notably by Judith Ivey as Keanu Reeves' fundamentalist Christian mother (the only person who seems to understand what's going on) and a heartbreaking one by Charlize Theron as his unsuspecting wife, slowly being driven insane by the supernatural happenings targeting her. There is a chillingly prescient turn by Craig T. Nelson as a Donald Trump figure accused of murder (ever the egotist, Trump allowed the production to film inside his Trump Tower penthouse.) I am not universally a fan of Al Pacino, who's occasionally struck me as a bit of a scenery chewer, but aside from Robert De Niro in Angel Heart, it was difficult for me to imagine any other actor as Satan after The Devil's Advocate. The film is also judiciously—and elegantly—sprinkled with Biblical imagery ("Walk with me," Pacino's Milton invites Reeves' rawboned Florida lawyer, just before offering him Manhattan, literally laid out at his feet) but never in any proselytizing way. It never, ever forgets that it's a blue-chip horror film. In my mind, it's the natural successor to Rosemary's Baby as the perfect New York demonicum.
