It’s a Movie, Not a Road Map for Legal System Overhaul

Lawyer and TV writer Roger Lowenstein has a problem with our movie “Devil’s Advocate.” Apparently we have made a film that is, according to the headline for his article, “a crime against our legal system.” We have gone so far, in Lowenstein’s estimation, that the implication is that nascent democracies around the world are threatened by our work.

He condemns the film’s portrayal of lawyers--not for inaccuracy or mistaken procedure--but because it dares show some unpleasant realities of criminal trial law.

He is outraged because the filmmakers “offer us no suggestion for a substitute system. . . .”

Lowenstein concludes that “Devil’s Advocate” “is immoral filmmaking and it violates our obligation as screenwriters to present a world with rules that we are willing to fight for.”

Is he kidding?

Rules we are willing to fight for? Suggestions for substitute systems? Our obligation as screenwriters? If there is any universal responsibility shared by screenwriters, it is to tell a story worthy of the audience’s interest. “Devil’s Advocate” is a movie about people, human behavior and the issues that place them in conflict. It is not, nor was it meant to be, a blueprint for institutional overhaul of our legal system.

It takes a complex and dedicated person to represent a felony defendant who is undeniably guilty. In “Devil’s Advocate,” Keanu Reeves plays a lawyer who gradually loses his taste for this moral charade.

Everyone--attorneys and screenwriters included--makes daily decisions about how they want to live and what they can live with.

That’s what we’re interested in.

Setting the guilty free, what does that feel like?

What does it do to you?

What does it do to your family?

What does it mean if your identity is so wrapped up in winning that you neglect your moral compass?

What about all that?

Apparently, these are questions Lowenstein would rather we didn’t ask. He wants things cut and dried. The simplicity of right and wrong. Some vague, doctrinaire obligation shared by writers and attorneys to avoid moral ambiguity. Don’t make a mess. Don’t provoke. Don’t ask questions.

Are those really the stories we need?