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How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 9 November 2013
This article is a review of THE COUNSELLOR.
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"I knew, but I was scared anyway,” Counsellor (Michael Fassbender) to Laura (Penélope Cruz)
Director Ridley Scott. Author Cormac McCarthy writing his first original screenplay. Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Cruz. A cast and crew that movie dreams are made of. Surely THE COUNSELLOR, even with its worryingly John Grisham-esque moniker, should be a project cutting a swathe through the senses? The fug of disappointment surrounds the final credits.
Director Ridley Scott. Author Cormac McCarthy writing his first original screenplay. Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Cruz. A cast and crew that movie dreams are made of. Surely THE COUNSELLOR, even with its worryingly John Grisham-esque moniker, should be a project cutting a swathe through the senses? The fug of disappointment surrounds the final credits.
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A motorcycle pelts full throttle along a highway two and a half miles from the Mexican border, entering the El Paso city limits. Cut to the titular lawyer in bed under sheets writhing in the arms of Laura. “Tell me something sexy,” he teases. THE COUNSELLOR exudes erotic frisson. The actors turn the temperature way up. Diaz crawls across a sports car; Brad Pitt flirts with GAME OF THRONES’ Natalie Dormer (a.k.a. Margaery Tyrell); Bardem recounts a salacious story from his love life. They almost distract from the flimsy story. Almost.
Given no name but Counsellor, he is bored and/or greedy, desiring a jackpot. Nothing is really explained. The audience must join the dots. Maybe his criminal clientele have given the contacts, and their docility/helplessness before him have buoyed his confidence? Going all Walter White from BREAKING BAD, he enters the narcotic trafficking trade. (Even Dean Norris’ Hank Schrader crops up in a cameo, mistakenly, as it highlights the disparity in quality between the two drug lord projects.) Stepping into the fray with wealthy middlemen, Reiner (Bardem) and Westray (Pitt), he appears shielded from the ruthless elements of the business. Even though the two delivers specific warnings, which you hope are not set-up for dramatic payoffs later on, and unfortunately are, Counsellor continues on a path reeking of foreboding. The trouble is, we’ve seen misadventure before, and done better. As a cautionary tale, THE COUNSELLOR is obvious.
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Maybe screenwriter McCarthy didn’t care the crime genre tropes are not sidestepped? Either way, like David Mamet at his worst, and COSMOPOLIS, there is much talking but little being actually said. As the inevitable unfolds, broad brushstroke observations on women, death and morality are spouted theatrically, playing to the rafters. “You don’t know someone till you know what they want,” Westray pontificates. The motivations are obfuscated to such a degree, one wonders if the players themselves are aware of their real wants. The main characters’ focus is so simplistic as to be one-word analyses: “greed” and “love”. Trying to look under the metaphorical hood of rationales reveals a simplistic engine. It purrs seductively in a chassis of sleekness, though drives to an inadequate destination.
THE COUNSELLOR reminds of Scott’s sibling’s MAN ON FIRE - a brutally grim portrayal of mercilessness and non-redemption, and woe betide any Americans who decide to dip their toes into the Latin American wild west.
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