Taylor Hackford's The Devil's Advocate (1997) puts a young lawyer named Kevin Lomax inside a Manhattan firm whose senior partner, John Milton, turns out to be the devil. The casting is the joke: Al Pacino, a man whose voice has always sounded one inch from prosecution. Pacino plays the devil as a senior partner — patient, charming, generous with bonus and time. The temptation is not loud. It is structural. Kevin says yes to the firm, then yes to the case, then yes to a witness's secret, then yes to a lie. By the time he understands he has been recruited, the recruiting is over.
The film's most quoted moment is Pacino's monologue at the end. Vanity, he says, when asked his favorite sin. Definitely my favorite. So basic. Self-love. The scene is the punchline. The setup is older. It is in the New Testament, in a letter written by Peter to scattered Christians decades after the resurrection:
"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."
A Lion, Not a Lawyer
Peter's image is feline, not legal. The Greek for walketh about is peripatei — the same root that gave English peripatetic, the philosopher who teaches while walking. The devil walks. He is a perimeter creature. He patrols. He looks for the slow.
Hackford's film visualizes exactly that. Pacino's Milton is everywhere in the building — in elevators, on rooftops, behind desks, on subway platforms. He never sits still, even when sitting. He is, in the verse's verb, in motion. He selects.
The verse adds as a roaring lion. The roar is not what catches the prey. The walking is. The roar is the announcement of what already arrived. By the time Kevin Lomax hears the roar, the firm is already housing it.
What Sober and Vigilant Are
The two adverbs Peter places before the lion are easy to skim. Sober in the Greek is nēphō — clear-headed, not drunk on anything, including success. Vigilant is grēgoreō — staying awake. Both are negative virtues. They prevent the prey from being chosen.
The film makes the negation visual. Kevin is offered champagne, scotch, sex, white linen rooms, ovations. Each is, in the Greek, the opposite of what Peter advised. Each leaves him slightly less able to see the lion's pace. By the climax he is no longer sober and not at all awake.
The Mother Who Reads
Kevin's mother, played by Judith Ivey, is a Florida churchgoer. She shows up halfway through the film with a Bible and a piece of vital information about Kevin's father. The film does not make her a saint. It does not even let her win the argument. But the verse she carries is the verse the film is built on. She has been reading it for years. Kevin has been ignoring it for as long.
The film's grace is to let her stay in the room. When Kevin finally turns, he turns toward what she said.
Vanity as the Lion's Throat
When Pacino delivers the vanity line, Hackford films him in close-up, almost lover-like. The sin Peter names is not vanity. The sin Peter names is the lion. But the two are joined. The lion eats whoever is too in love with himself to look up.
Kevin's last act is to refuse — to walk away from the closing argument that would have made his career. The film loops. We are back at the beginning, with a journalist asking for an exclusive on the brilliant young lawyer. Vanity, Pacino says into the camera, my favorite sin. The lion was never going to leave. He was only going to circle.
The Forty Seconds
Read 1 Peter 5:8 once. Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Forty seconds. In that time you can hear what the film took two and a quarter hours to dramatize. The roar at the end is what you remember. The walking, before the roar, is what the verse warns against.
The firm is the spectacle. The walking is the verse. Vanity, in the end, is what stops the prey from running.