> É, é = *e'vil, r*ee'l

Huh. That's poor phonological analysis I reckon. Doesn't matter where you are from, there is a difference in say reed and reel - the tongue has to make a palatal closure quite far back against the roof of the mouth to go from the eee sound to the el sound. So there is almost bound to be a production which, if slowed down, might sound a bit more like reee~uhl, making it sound different to the plain eee in evil.

But these are the problems inherent in trying to define pronunciation in its own terms!