Where Suing the Devil Will Get You: A Movie Review

*spoiler alert

Director/writer: Timothy A. Chey.

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Shannen Fields and Corbin Bernsen.

When Malcolm McDowell is cast as Satan in the courtroom thriller, Suing the Devil, interest piques. The big question is whether or not he can pull off playing such a big role. To put it bluntly, Hell yes! The fun is in watching what kind of hijinks the devil will pull off.

The melodrama comes from the fact that Luke O’Brien (Bart Bronson) has had a rough life of late. He cannot find rhyme or reason as to why everything is going wrong. That also includes a random driver that cut him off in traffic. O’Brien swore up a storm in how he will get that miscreant back.

Luke figures he can blame the devil for all of society’s ills. Even though he does not have his law degree yet, this down and out student has a plan. And that is to serve Old Scratch a summons. He's suing him for eight trillion dollars. But no one can put a dollar value to all the problems Satan has caused unto humanity.

Free Will has given mankind the right to choose. There is nothing at stake should Luke lose. That's one major weak point in this film. There is no Faustian pact, even though the Devil tries to convince O’Brien otherwise. Instead this film is more about conversion and seeing McDowell delivering one of his best performances to date.

Some parts of the dialogue also ask questions of existentialism, philosophy and spirituality. But the inevitable confrontation comes in how O'Brien should start to lead a good Christian life. The idea of forgiveness gets hammered in and fortunately, that does not destroy the enjoyability of this film.

Watching this film is like watching "Night Court" and "Perry Mason." There's some good rhetoric going on—most of which are irreverent to Luke's case—and there's plenty of uncertainty to make the drama work. And very rarely will any movie break the fourth wall to involve viewers too. It's brief, and this technique is used well to bring viewers into the fray.

And audiences can get whatever they want out of this product. If it motivates them to lead a better life, that's great. If all this movie does is entertain, that is fine too. Some religious products insist on conversion, but this one is careful. Some viewers are not rolling their eyes inwards by the end.

As this film states, "We work on our own salvation day by day," and that's all anyone needs to know. That's far better than another sermon about becoming faithful to a higher force.

8 out of 10.

The film's homepage is here:

The Suing the Devil Homepage

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Posted in: 2012,devil,dramatic thriller,malcolm mcdowell,movie review,satan,spirituality