Low Budget

I watched The Verdict, with Paul Newman, and greatly enjoyed the tale of a bottom-feeding alcoholic trial attorney, a plaintiff's attorney in a medical malpractice case, fighting the odds.  The acting was great, the critical turns were well-concealed until the last moment.  One turning point was done entirely without dialog, ending with a marvelously deserved sock to the jaw.

As I left the theater, I heard two guys behind me talking.  One said: "Law school kind of ruins you for this movie."  Years later, I went to law school.  I never became a plaintiff's attorney, or even did the kind of litigation defense that was the subject of this film.  But I can testify to this: the movie is still fine.

When I first saw The Devil's Advocate, I also enjoyed it.  A brilliant defense attorney goes to work for Al Pacino's devil.  Really, it's hard to go wrong.  But, though the movie was enjoyable from almost every angle, Law School really did ruin this one for me.  Why?  Because the outcome was no longer morally tenable.

In The Verdict, what the guys were complaining about was a matter of process.  Rules of discovery and evidence make real litigation plodding, no matter how gripping the underlying issues might be.  But it's still a story of the triumph of truth and the little man over powerful institutions.  The story has moral authenticity.

The Devil's Advocate, however, takes aim at an unfair target.  The first step on Keanu Reeve's descent into satanic servitude occurs when he gives his client, who we learn is guilty, the best defense.  In movies there has long been a conciet that heroic attornies defend innocent clients.  The structure of the Hollywood legal story is always the uncovering of innocence.  An attorney who defends a guilty client is compromised under this system.

Yet real trial attornies are, more often than not, defending the guilty.  That's how the system works.  Litigation is a testing process from which the truth is supposed to emerge.  If defense attornies only took on innocent clients, then you would, before you could find a defender, have to prove your innocence to the attorney, first.  And he or she has less at stake.  So a good defense attorney, a moral defense attorney, does not distinguish between guilt and innocence.  He takes his client and gives him the best defense.  Cape Fear explored what can happen when a defense attorney overrides the judicial system, allowing his client to be punished.  In the classic balance of the horror movie, the punishment is vastly disproportionate the moral failure.  Still, within the context of horror film, it's a moral balance.

Like most people, I have many areas of specialized knowledge.  I also have the ability to disable them when watching movies that tread loosely with reality.  But there's a difference between suspending judgement as to the description of a a process, and accepting the complete moral reversel of The Devil's Advocate.  Not saying I can't do it.