Academy Award winning director Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Gladiator). Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Cormac McCarthy (The Road, No Country For Old Men).
Michael Fassbender. Brad Pitt. Javier Bardem. Penelope Cruz. Cameron
Diaz. What happened here? A squandered opportunity. With such a pedigree
preceding the collaboration and such magnificent ingredients, it is
hard not to walk into The Counselor with some level of anticipation and expectation. But few would have foreseen such a tedious and inanimate result.
I enjoy films that try something different and pose a challenge for the audience, but The Counselor
is tough work, encumbered by a thin, confusing plot and inconsequential
and overwritten monologues and anecdotes, while throwing at an audience
blatant misogyny, windshield sex, high speed decapitations and a lot of
other nasty business. I wasn’t a fan, though I thought there were some
fascinating characters and terrific patches of dialogue.
The story is set on the Tex/Mex border (a staple in
McCarthy’s novels) and we are immediately introduced to the titular
protagonist (Fassbender), referred to as ‘The Counselor’ by everyone,
including his beautiful girlfriend Laura (Cruz). This handsome smooth
talker has built up a position of power and as he needs to continue to
fund his lavish lifestyle – buying his fiancé a diamond ring with as few
carrots as possible is in the works – he decides to further capitalize
on it. The Counselor joins the party of Reiner (Bardem), an
eccentrically attired (and haired) client who puts him in touch with a
middleman named Westray (Pitt) who warns him not to get involved with
the Mexican cartel, and the considered smuggling operation. We are also
introduced to Reiner’s girlfriend Malkina (Diaz), a tattooed ice queen
with pet cheetahs and her own agenda. When the deal goes bad – the loot
gets stolen, and The Counselor, having bailed out a biker as a personal
favor to an incarcerated client, is consequently tied to it all. He
finds himself entangled and out of his depth in this unforgiving and
merciless underworld.
Continue reading at Graffiti With Punctuation.
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