While "The Devil's Advocate" is set in the real world of contemporary New York, the events in the story are certainly not conventional, and their representation onscreen required virtuoso technical abilities. Visual-effects specialists RICHARD GREENBERG and STEPHANIE POWELL and Oscar-winning makeup effects specialist RICK BAKER created the unsettling images that reveal the true identities of John Milton, his law partners and their spouses, as well as the dramatic effects at the climax of the film. Says producer Arnon Milchan, "One of the most frightening things is not to be able to trust your senses -- to look at something and not be sure you can believe your eyes, for example. Time and again, there are scenes in `The Devil's Advocate' where Kevin and Mary Ann think they may be seeing something very frightening, but when they look again, it's not there. The doubt and the confusion is even more frightening than the specter they thought they saw." Explains Taylor Hackford, "We were careful not to let the monster out of the box, so to speak, by using any images that were obvious. Things appear and disappear in a moment; sometimes they seem real and sometimes they seem like a bad dream, so that when the events in the story actually do emerge into reality, the Lomaxes don't know what's real and what isn't anymore. "There is an important scene at the climax of the story in John Milton's home, where he himself is transformed, first into a younger version of himself that resembles Keanu Reeves, and then into an angel. To accomplish this, we used life masks of both Pacino's present-day face and his younger face -- the latter of which we obtained from DICK SMITH, who created it for `The Godfather.' We also made a life mask of Keanu, and Rick Baker, who did his training long ago with Dick, used all three to transform Al from a mature face to a youthful face to a blend of his own and Keanu's youthful face, and finally into an angel, which is, of course, what Lucifer was before he was cast out of Heaven. "The transformation is eerie and unsettling, but also very beautiful. It reminds us where the Devil came from, and why he exists: he was the highest angel, the closest to God, until his ego caused him to be cast away from God. Today, we are so often driven by our egos -- and rewarded for it -- that we forget how dire Lucifer's punishment was for his sin of ego and vanity. "We've created a very real-world Devil in this story -- a demon whose world is our own, with all its mundane events. He appears in human form and presents human choices, and his greatest lure is what we have in common with him: our greed, ego, jealousy, competitiveness, lust, dishonesty. "He is familiar, and that's what makes him so dangerous. But when he is fully revealed, that's what also reminds us he was once divine. It was losing the battle, giving up the struggle against those temptations that damned Lucifer. So instead of showing him as something with horns and a tail, we chose to show him as he once was, before his ego corrupted him." Warner Bros. Presents, In Association with Regency Enterprises, A Kopelson Entertainment Production of A Taylor Hackford Film: Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino in "The Devil's Advocate," starring Charlize Theron, Jeffrey Jones, Judith Ivey and Craig T. Nelson. The music is by James Newton Howard; the film is edited by Mark Warner; and the production is designed by Bruno Rubeo. The director of photography is Andrzej Bartkowiak, A.S.C. The executive producers are Taylor Hackford, Michael Tadross, Erwin Stoff, Barry Bernardi and Steve White. The screenplay is by Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy, based on the novel by Andrew Niederman. "The Devil's Advocate" is produced by Arnon Milchan, Arnold Kopelson and Anne Kopelson. It is directed by Taylor Hackford and distributed worldwide by Warner Bros., A Time Warner Entertainment Company.