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Home » Continuing the Halloween ‘Sprint’… Dolores Claiborne & The Devil’s Advocate.

Continuing the Halloween ‘Sprint’… Dolores Claiborne & The Devil’s Advocate.

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Taylor Hackford. Slightly unfortunate name for a film director, that. Very pleased to say that he’s certainly no hack and has one bonafide classic film to his name, 1982’s An Officer and a Gentleman, a romantic movie with genuinely wide appeal beyond a ‘traditional’ audience.

Like that film, his 2004 biopic of Ray Charles, Ray, maintains an almost 80% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with higher audience approval ratings. He’s good.

We’re briefly looking at two of his films today that were part of our Halloween list this year: Dolores Claiborne from 1995 and The Devil’s Advocate from 1997.

Of the two, Claiborne is the superior film. Based on a Stephen King novel, there’s an argument that the nineties was the decade that really cemented him as a cinematic juggernaut. By that point, he was already likely the most successful author of his generation, but the best-known films based on his work were Carrie (1976) and The Shining (1980), both firmly in the horror genre. 1990 gave us Misery, then four years later The Shawshank Redemption was released, a movie beloved by nice, normal people, not just horror nuts. People started to realise there was much more to King than buckets of blood. The Constant Readers among us who had been devouring his novels and stories for years by that point muttered a collective ‘told you so,’ as he suddenly became respectable.

Since then… well, suffice it to say that IMDB lists 19 upcoming projects based on his work and I expect that’s a conservative estimate. The reboot of IT has got Hollywood treating him like a cash cow.

Similarly, this may have been the peak period for Kathy Bates, with the double whammy of Misery and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1991) raising her profile and bookending the other end of the decade with her performance as the unsinkable Molly Brown in Titanic. She’s a fine, likeable actor and well worthy of attention.

Playing the eponymous role in Claiborne against Jennifer Jason Leigh as her estranged daughter, the film plays out as a dual murder mystery in two timelines, with her as the prime suspect for both. This is not a horror movie, though it certainly has horrific moments and earns a pass as a Halloween watch because of both King and the fact it clearly whetted Hackford’s appetite for horror, given where he went next.

Bates is excellent throughout and while Jason Leigh has made a career of playing unlikeable types that she firmly sticks to here, the gradual reveal of her character is tied to the mystery reasonably well. The supporting cast is top quality as well, with the likes of Christopher Plummer and David Strathairn here playing against his own common typecasting. A pre-comedy John C Reilly also impresses, as he would continue to do so, especially in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia in 1999.

There’s nothing really remarkable here about the cinematography or direction. It’s simple, effective, and gets out of the way, allowing the cast to build tension and mystery. There’s a kind of down-to-Earth relatability to it that feels apiece with An Officer and a Gentleman. It’s a good movie which will appeal to crime fans more than horror junkies. If memory serves correctly from the written version, it shares a plot point with Gerald’s Game too, which had an excellent Netflix movie adaptation from Mike Flanagan a year or two ago, so that would make a pretty good double-bill.

Hackford’s next outing as a director would be the altogether more over-the-top and less well-received The Devil’s Advocate in 1997, part of a glut of apocalyptic pre-millennial movies which is also notable for Al Pacino joining contemporaries like Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro in portraying Satan. The casting of Keanu Reeves as his son was a good call for their physical resemblance, but you’d struggle to find a wider gulf in terms of acting skill. To be fair to Reeves, he’s fine in this, but he would always come off second best in comparison. Still, this is one of the films where Pacino transitions from great actor to great big ham, shouting and balling for all he’s worth in the overlong conclusion.

The best actor in this film – by far – is Charlize Theron. She’s not given enough to do, but what she does achieve is humanising and grounding the drama. Her (spoiler) death also elicits the best, most naturalistic piece of acting from Reeves in any of his films. Look… Theron is probably Geek Graffiti’s favourite actor and celebrity, we’re biased, but this is a star-making early turn for her and frankly, the film suffers whenever she’s not on the screen.

Unlike in Claiborne, Hackford does more visually here. There’s plenty of VFX which works well for the most part, but ultimately it’s a fairly forgettable endeavour. Much like the Schwarzenegger vehicle, End of Days which followed a couple of years later, this is a mean-spirited movie which relies heavily on its antagonist’s predatory lust. They’re fairly similar plot-wise too, albeit obviously, Days is far more action-oriented. The notion that lawyers are a pack of evil demonic scumbags is hardly original either. Still, it’s entertaining enough and certainly worth checking out if you’re a Pacino or Theron completionist.

Take it easy, folks. We’ll be back soon.

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