Oooh God did this suck. I mean bad. The website of this film claims that it is "An epic, spiritual battle in the courtroom, Suing the Devil, is a high concept, faith-based, legal thriller that will leave you breathless and cheering". Yes it left me breathless and cheering, breathless on how stupid it was and cheering that it was finally over. Most of it happens in a courtroom and it is epic in its stupidity, but a legal thriller this is not nor is it very spiritual. Since this movie wants to be a legal thriller I will use other legal thrillers as points of reference and since it wants to argue theology/philosophy, lets talk about that as well.
Lets get this over with. The basic premise of the plot is that a law student, who's life sucks, decides that it is all Satans fault and like any good lawyer decides to sue the 8 trillion dollars. Satan accepts, for whatever reason, the film did really explain why, and the legal drama begins. Satan hires the "best" trial lawyers in the world to represent him and to really drive home the fact that well-paid, well-dressed lawyers are EVIL, these people defended nefarious groups like Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Air Lines etc. This from the start is slightly idiotic. Lawyers as group of professional are guided by a set of ethical principles(I know hard to believe right) chief of which is that they are required to zealously defend their clients case in court, whatever the case maybe. This is to insure that no matter how heinous the crime you are being accused of, you will be adequetly repressented by a zealous attorney. Its a staple ethical problem in legal dramas when the lawyer's professional and personal ethics come into conflict, not that anything like this would be in this film.
I am getting ahead of myself before the trial can begin our protagonist have to serve a subpoena to the Devil and this where the rather simplistic ethics of this start appearing. The protagonist makes copies of the summons and starts flyering various places where Satan might be found lurking, like a law firm(I don't get this lawyer bashing, I mean isn't the hero of this film working very hard to become one), a strip club and a group Heavy metal fans, who like all heavy metal fans do wear satanic imagery. The dude even asks these guys "do you worship Satan?" and like any self respecting heavy metal fan would, they give him the finger. So this movie's idea of evil things in this world are, law firms, strip clubs and heavy metal. I am going to make list of all the things this movie thinks is EVIL at the end of this review.
Being a legal "thriller" (its not really a thriller, since there is nothing thrilling about it) most of the movie takes place in a courtroom and in which court room you might ask is the Trial of the Century being held. In a very vague Court of Human Rights. I am not a lawyer, but I am under the impression that when someone sues somebody else for damages, its a civil case tried in a civil court. Nevermind. The venue is the least of our problems when it comes to court room procedings. This case should be very simple, the hero has to proove that Satan is responsible for his own misery and the misery of the entire humanity. Satan's team tries to defend against this. Nothing resembling a clear case with any form of evidence emergece from this pile of shit. What mostly happens in the court is that the hero calls various priests on the stand talk about the Bible and quote it(Which proves what exactly?). Satan's defence team objects A LOT, sometimes 4 lawyers at a time and almost without a fail the the objections are rejected by the judge.(It would appear that the film makers idea of a good lawyer is that he/she yells OBJECTION a lot) Absolutely no case or argument comes to forth during the court room scenes and who is leading the trial boils down to a popularity contest, not on the merits of the arguments.
There is the mandatory "evil-lawyers-dig-up-your-dirt"-scene, where, OMG you won't believe this, the protagonist of this film has viewed Internet porn, used the word fuck and ethnic slurs.(Yay, more things to the list) Holy shit, he is such a bad person. For fucks sake, do I even have to explain how dumb this is and more to the point WHAT FUCKING RELEVANCE DOES THIS HAVE WITH THE FUCKING CASE? My god is this dumb, this is again a staple of legal dramas, attack the accuser, but in much better legal dramas it is done to undermine the credibility of a witness with something slightly more substantive than fucking internet porn and foul language.
Lets talk about the Devil for a while. He is played by Malcom McDowell and even he couldn't save this carbage largely because the script has managed to remove all sense of menace and evil from The Prince of Darkness. He behaves mostly like an asshole and McDowell seems to enjoy playing this role. There are several a few ways that Satan is depcited in films, either as some evil demon-thingy or as a seductive tempter. This film attempts the tempter bit at one point, when the hero owns Satan's ass by reading the Bible, he offers the hero money and riches if he drops the case and gives him his soul. Now I am going to do what the film did, randomly introduce a bit of info, the hero's girl friend/wife/fuck buddy has a brain tumor. Now wouldn't the fucking obvious thing to offer been to take the tumor away, to offer the man something he really cares about, instead of money. This would have injected a much needed moral dilema into this so called spiritual film. How much would you be willing to sacrifice to defeat Satan? Would you give up your soul to save a loved one or another human being in general? This lost opportunity remined me of a great film that had a similar dilemma, Michael Clayton, a very good legal thriller. The titular character Micheal Clayton has a choice, he can do the morally right thing but at the expense of sacrificing a large part of his own happiness and well-being. A clear moral choice with huge consequences.
Satan also has this weird rant scene, which is a stand in for the climax of any legal thriller, the scene where the lawyer breaks the key witness/suspect and introduces the conclusive piece of evidence or a confession. In this film, instead of using clever questioning, it is done by using faith and reading the bible to get Satan to hump you from behind. He rants about how he hates humanity and he delights in causing havoc and the things he created, like noise, car alarms, gangsta rap, techno music, customer service, automated anwsering machines, unjust bills, parking tickets, utility companies, apparently to make us miserable.(Wow, A lot of stuff to the list). Euhm, utility companies, like the companies that provide electricity, water, gas and heating, are evil. The companies that provided me and alot of other people with electricity that powers the lights and the laptop I am using, with the water that I use for cooking, drinking and washing, that warm my house to a comfortable +20 celsius instead of the ball-freezing -28 celsius, are FUCKING EVIL AND CREATED BY SATAN. Oooh God is this dumb.
This scene is the only court scene where something gets proven, Satan pretty much confesses to doing all sorts of evil things. And in the next Satan's A-Team manages objects and in some bizarre fluke the judge throws the previous testimony out, because Satan was insane at the moment. Do I even have to explain how dumb this is? Not that it really mattered, since the hero wins anyway. Not that this mattes either since it was all a dream. A fucking dream. I would be angry, but I lost hope in this film, at the scene, where a little girl goes to ask Satan for an autograph(WTF!?!), Satan rebukes him and the little girl kicks him in the leg and runs away, like a boss. At that point the Satan character was reduced pretty much to a joke. Here is this movie's top tip on fighting Satan in your life, forget chanting some exorcism ritual or holy water, kick him in the leg and run away.
The legal thriller parts of this film failed pretty badly. It collects a bunch of cliches from other, much better films and mashes them together into an incoherrent mess. The film actually has the balls to quote the famous "you can't handle the truth"-line from A Few Good Men. The parts that fail even more are the movies attempts at being spiritual. These would be the scenes where the Bible gets quoted, with the message being Satan BAD, Jesus GOOD. There is no great moral dilemma, there is no real debate on the underlying issue, are we responsible for the evils of this world or is it Satan's fault? The main character learns a lesson in the end, which boils down to stop looking at stuff that you have lost or don't have, instead focus on what you have. Not a bad moral lesson to give, but this has again been done much more effectively in It's a Wonderful Life, fucking 6 decades ago.
There other weird things in this film as well, like the where the fuck did all the Satan groupies come from in the court room scenes? Where the fuck are all the christians of this world, you would think that they would take the opportunity to fight Satan himself and score some God points? Why does the "demons vs angels" scene come so early in the story? Why is Satan's legal A-Team so incompetent? Why does Tom Sizemore have role as retarded talking head? Why does the protagonist look like a demented mad man in the owning Satan by reading the Bible to him scene? And more to the point why the fuck do I keep thinking about this film? FUCK THIS FILM, I am going to watch Rainmaker now.
As promised the list of EVIL things according to this movie
Lawyers with professional ethics
Law firms
Oil companies
Tobacco companies
Air Lines
Strip Clubs
Heavy Metal
Cussing
Internet Porn
Racial slurs
Car Alarms
Gangsta Rap
Techno Music
Customer Service
Utility Companies(gas, electricity, heat and water services I pressume)
Automated anwsering machines
parking tickets
unjust bills
Used car salesmen
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