So this post was supposed to be the 1997 movie, "The Last Time I Committed Suicide." Here's the thing - I've been in a real recent slump here in terms of the last several movies I've slogged through. Here's a quick look back:
"Feeling Minnesota" made me feel like jumping off a building. "Chain Reaction" was basically a direct rip-off on "The Fugitive" and while it was better than I'd expected, it was still not very good. "A Walk in the Clouds" was half decent but certainly not my cup of tea, and "Johnny Mnemonic" was astoundingly terrible.
So up next was yet another movie I know nothing about and I thought to myself, you know, I just don't have it in me. I don't want to spend $2 to stream what is probably another shitty movie. I mean, there are ZERO critical reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and the movie grossed $46,000 at the box office on a $4 Million budget. That's about all I need to know. 2020 is pretty bleak right now and the last thing I need in my life at this exact moment is another super shitty Keanu Reeves movie. So, as much as I know all five of my readers will be upset, I am officially skipping "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" and moving directly to a different super shitty Keanu Reeves movie, "The Devil's Advocate."
I have only seen this movie once in my life, sometime around 2000 or 2001 when I was working a summer job at a video store, where my main responsibilities were changing movie posters, determining what the best PG rated movies were that I could broadcast on the in-store televisions (the answer of course, is "Clue), and watching with great intent variety of men who would come in to my store with the sole purpose of renting pornography, which must have accounted for at least 50% of our business. But that's a story for another time.
The best perk of working at the video store was all the free rentals I wanted, which is why I went through a period of watching all sorts of random shit and it was during this time I figured, what the hell, let's try "The Devil's Advocate."
So while I didn't remember much about this movie, the one thing I did remember was the big "twist," Al Pacino is the devil!
Here's the thing about that...well, actually, take two minutes and watch the trailer:
And here's the poster:
So, unless you are a total fucking moron, you go into the movie already knowing the big reveal. Having watched it again last night it dawned on me that had this been named something else, had a far less revealing trailer, didn't have the tag line "He's about to lose his soul," and was just a tad more subtle, it COULD have been a decent movie.
But there's zero subtlety and by the time we find out what we've already known since minute zero, I just couldn't give a shit. This movie absolutely bangs you over the head with knowledge that Al Pacino is satan. His fucking name is JOHN MILTON, but if your knowledge of Paradise Lost is limited or non-existent, don't worry, there are multiple other times we are clued in as to what's going on here.
The movie opens with Keanu Reeves as Kevin Lomax, in a Florida courtroom defending a pedophile teacher, played by Chris Bauer, best known for his role as Frank Sabotka on "The Wire." There's absolutely no reason for this to take place in Gainesville other than to justify Keanu Reeves doing yet another atrocious accent. Keanu, I love you, but please STOP taking roles that require accent work.
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| Stay off the docks. |
Despite realizing the guilt of his client, Kevin Lomax is the world's greatest attorney and gets him acquitted. Shortly thereafter, he's recruited to this giant law firm in New York, run by Al Pacino as John Milton, who also happens to be the devil.
From here, the movie plods along until the "reveal," with several subplots I couldn't care about, including Keanu having to defend a voodoo practicing Delroy Lindo from animal abuse charges and taking a case defending Coach from a triple homicide. Oh, and noted pedophile Jeffrey Jones is also in this.
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| A right wing asshole and a real life pedophile walk into a bar... |
By the way, this gives me an excuse to include one of my all-time favorite clips of Craig T. Nelson explaining how capitalism works, not recognizing the hilarious irony in his statement:
I should also note, that Craig T. Nelson at least appears to be a stand-in for Donald Trump, so that's a lot of fun right about now.
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| What I imagine Trump Tower looks like. Classy. |
Also, Keanu's wife Mary Ann, played by Charlize Theron, smells something fishy early on, has a mental breakdown after being raped (off-screen) by the devil, and eventually kills herself.
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| "You look...lovely?" |
Yeah.
Again, all of this could be way more interesting if this movie gave a shit about a slow reveal rather than throwing everything in your face early and often.
After Mary Ann loses her shit, Keanu goes to Al Pacino's home/office to confront him (he lives in one giant room with no furniture), where everything we've known this entire time is revealed in a THIRTY MINUTE monologue by Al Pacino. It. Is. Interminable.
The only thing revealed during his diatribe that we didn't already know is that Keanu is actually Al Pacino's son and Pacino wants Keanu to bang his half-sister so together they can create the anti-christ. Rather than accept this as his fate, Keanu shoots himself in the head and Al Pacino has a hilarious meltdown.
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| LET IT END! |
It is all VERY stupid and yes, I hate this movie too. So glad I skipped "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" for this...
Some scattered thoughts:
*This might be Keanu's worst accent work to date. It's really, really bad, and completely unnecessary. There's literally no reason he's from Gainesville, Florida when he could be from LITERALLY ANYWHERE and not have to do accent work. He's got this cutesy nickname for his wife, which he shouts multiple times in the movie, simply shortening Mary Ann to Mar (which he pronounces "mare."). I literally had no idea what he was saying every time he called her Mar and what's funny is that I was watching this with captions on and every time he said her name, the captions didn't even bother to transcribe it.
*Al Pacino says some ridiculous shit in this. My favorite is probably, "I'm the hand up Mona Lisa's skirt - they never see me coming!"
*The second movie in a row featuring Delroy Lindo. His part in this is wholly unnecessary, as is much of this movie.
*Charlize Theron is the only part of this movie that isn't completely awful.
Box Office information: $61 Million Domestic ($121 Million adjusted)/$92 Million International, $153 Million worldwide on a $56 Million budget and the 30th highest grossing movie of 1997. A moderate success. It's also the 1,384th highest domestic movie of all time and the 267th all time most worldwide box office.
Rotten Tomatoes: 67% Critical, 80% Audience. TOO HIGH.
IMDB: 7.5
My Movie Rating: 4/10. As I've already noted multiple times, this movie could have been significantly better with some tweaks, specifically not banging you over the head letting you know that Al Pacino is the devil. And if we are SUPPOSED to know that within the first five minutes (if you somehow avoided the trailer, the poster, and the name of the movie), then what is the point of this?
Keanu Rating: 3.5/10. It's mostly the accent work, but he's also just not very good in this.
Up next: Could it be....yes, The Matrix! This is the first movie since I rewatched "Speed" that I'm actually excited about.
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