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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A rarity: movie better than book,
By
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This review is from: The Devil's Advocate (Mass Market Paperback)
This is one of those rare occasions where the movie is much better than the book. This novel is a mediocre effort. It might have benefitted from a futher rewrite--or three. It also doesn't seem to have been through the hands of a competent editor. The book's one real contribution is that it gave Taylor Hackford the basis for an excellent movie.
I suppose I should admit that I'm a fan of the genre. Satan, as a cultural archetype, has long fascinated me. Even with all of its flaws, "Omen III" is still one of my favorite movies. Unlike Sam Neil's tongue-in-cheek performance, Neiderman's book in unleavened by humor, intentional or unintentional. The author takes his subject and his book with a stultifying seriousness. A seriousness his slender gifts can't support. Unfortunately, the book fails to meet the expectations raised by its concept. Its muddled, unfocused plot is one of the problems that Hackford rectifies in his filmed version. Satan as presented in this book seems little more dangerous than Bob Barker--unlike the frenetic performance by Al Pacino. The two characters have only the name in common. The writing, at times, is surprisingly bad. The dialogue is often stilted and awkward. The Devil is named John Milton in a rather clumsy attempt at a joke. The author never refers to the character as anything but "John Milton" or "Mr. Milton." The books protagonist, Kevin Taylor, is recruited by Milton's premiere criminal law firm after winning an acquittal from a child-molesting middle school teacher. His staid, Long Island firm's partners, far more comfortable with zoning variances and drafting wills, suggests he look elsewhere to continue his career. Having the Devil's offers already in his back pocket, Taylor leaves the firm and goes to work in Manhattan. Afraid his wife will be reluctant to leave their cozy Long Island life for the hustle of Manhattan, he soon finds she's even more swept up in the big city's temptations than himself. But, naturally, all does not stay well long. As with so many possibilties, Neiderman fails to use the marriage, as Hackford does, to illustrate the price to be paid for giving into temptation. Taylor's suspicions are first aroused when he begins having dreams of his wife having sex with another man while he lies next to her. When he awakes, she congratulates him on the great sex they've had--sex Kevin can't remember at all. In an inexplicable plot twist, Satanus ex Machina, if you will, our protagonist, discovers a computer file filled with cases, two years ahead, of crimes that haven't yet been committed. From there the book goes from the mediocre--a chauffer named "Charon"--to the implausible--all delivered in pedestrian prose with characters that are essentially interchangeable and uninsteresting. Instead of the great confrontation and twist at the end Hackford gives us in the movie, Neiderman's book ends up with this razor-sharp, brilliant criminal defense lawyer stumbling through an obvious set-up in an ending pinched, and not cleverly, from the Omen films. He finds himself serving a life sentence, where the prisoners assure him of his safety as long as he helps them draft their appeals. Sent to the prison law-library he finds the prison librarian's eyes to be the same as the ubiquitous John Milton. And the writing isn't THAT interesting. Finally, there's just little in this novel to hold the reader's attention. In a better writer's hands, the basic idea would have only been scaffolding for the story. Unfortunately, Neiderman presents us only with the scaffolding. He's very fortunate that Taylor Hackford took that scaffolding and fleshed it out to produce a very good movie. Neiderman seems incapable of seeing the richer possibilities and gives us a second rate novel that lacks of the pacing of Grisham's potboilers. It's just a mess with some "diamonds in the mud." Unlike so many times where a film is unable to capture the fullness of the novel, "The Devil's Advocate" reverses the cliche. There simply isn't any complexity to lose. It's like a the pencil sketch of a painting on the canvas without the paint.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Modern Devil in Film and Novel,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Devil's Advocate (Mass Market Paperback)
My interest in the classics, such as Faust, Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy inspired my interest in the movie and book versions of The Devil's Advocate. Though it would not be appropriate to compare the modern story intended as popular entertainment with these literary classics, the subject matter is similar and might interest anyone with an appreciation of these works. I saw the movie first and felt that novel might have something more to offer. I felt that the book lacked much of the drama of the film - two-thirds of it is devoted to the saga of Kevin and Miriam moving from a suburb to downtown New York. I had expected it to deal more with the confrontation of innocence with ultimate evil. This is conveyed more effectively in the movie by the character of Satan as portrayed by Al Pacino. The character of Kevin's wife is drawn much more sympathetically in the film than the book. The ending of the movie is more convincing and powerful than that of the book, which tends to rely on theatrical devices. I thought picking on the legal profession as the Devil's chosen instrument of evil was a bit overdone in the movie; the book suggests that disreputable lawyers represent only one arm of Satan, and that everyone has spores of evil within them waiting for an appropriate opportunity to germinate. A reading of the book may stimulate more ideas than the faster paced movie, but overall the film strengthens some of the themes in the story and makes the characters more compelling. One must credit the author with an imaginative idea that was to some extent refined by the screenwriters. Those with an interest in classical literature are apt to be more critical of the book than the film, but both stimulate the imagination.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
bland,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Devil's Advocate (Mass Market Paperback)
After Pacino's gem of a diatribe near the end of the movie, I expected even more from the book. But that part, the invention of a more talented screenplay writer, was missing; and the dialogue and story line were flat. A Keanu Reeves movie beats the book it was based on!
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