Today's Mini-Review: The Counselor

The Counselor: ***/*****, or 6/10

According to Cormac McCarthy, acclaimed author of novels such as No Country for Old Men and The Road (and thus indirectly also responsible for two great cinematic adaptations of said works), hell hath no fury like a woman hungry. In his screenwriting debut, The Counselor, we learn a thing or two about women for sure. They can be the most scheming, conniving, ruthlessly intelligent and sexually uninhibited creatures imaginable, or they can be loving, charming wives-to-be instead, though the former eats the latter for lunch if left to her shady devices. McCarthy also means to inform his audience on a diverse range of other assorted topics with this film, including the make-up of diamonds, the dangers of speeding (which can lead to both incarceration and decapitation), the sexually stimulating nature of fast cars and the machinations of a deadly device called a bolito (which we will end up seeing in working order in much more detail than we would like to have seen before the film is over) but the exact workings of the film's main topic, a drug deal gone horribly awry, remain rather elusive by comparison. McCarthy proves he's as consistent in his job as a screen writer as he is a novelist, as he keeps dabbling in the cynical realm associated with man's darker, greedier nature, but coherency unfortunately is not his strong suit as evidenced here.

The Counselor features all the ingredients of a strong, effective film, including an intriguing premise, a top-notch director in the person of Sir Ridley Scott and a solid cast to match. The counselor in question is an otherwise nameless man (Michael Fassbender) who leads a seemingly happy life with his fiancé Laura (Penelope Cruz), but aspires to gain much more by better playing his card of being in a position of influence, which leads him to the decision of getting involved in a lucrative but risky drug deal. His associates, the flamboyant bon-vivant Reiner (Javier Bardem) and the cautionary Westray (Brad Pitt) tell him of the dangers of such deals in juicy details (most of which we will see come to bloody fruition in a grand case of cinematic parallelism), but the counselor accepts the job nonetheless. You know this charming man is gonna regret his choice well before he actually makes it, but you'll find him sympathetic enough to root for him to be successful in this venture. When the trafficker loses his head, someone at the top of the game loses a lot of money, patience and general goodwill towards man, which leads to everybody's necessity to bail out immediately or face grave, disturbing consequences. Reiner's girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz), a woman as gorgeous as she is devious and greedy above all else, soon seems to be pulling all the strings and relentlessly hunts the money and those in her way. A killing spree erupts, in which a fair share of people, decent and not so decent alike, lose it all, during which the counselor must come to terms with the very bad call he made, one we always knew from the get-go would come to this conclusion. This film sounds very much like a thriller, which it wants to be, but the amount of thrills it offers comes up short. In fact, the first half of the movie is comprised of endless dialogue, some beautifully written, some less catchy, but much of it quite digressing and ultimately redundant. When the shit finally hits the fan, it does so with a vengeance in a bunch of short, brutal bursts, but by that time many spectators will have seized to care, or worse, failed to understand just what is going on and who is connected to who in the ultimate scheme of things considering the many players and their complicated and underdeveloped interrelations.

Nevertheless, what The Counselor lacks in terms of writing, Sir Ridley often makes up for to some extent in directing, as the film's best moments are largely cinematic in nature, including the drug dealer accidentally shot in the head and immediately robbed by local vagabonds before being devoured by his own cheetahs, as well as the already infamous scene displaying Malkina's inexplicable drive to copulate with a nice car (Cameron certainly goes for it!), an ecstatic moment of absurdity that ruins the ride for its bewildered owner. The Counselor has all the hallmarks of a flawed masterpiece, as everything is necessary to craft a grand, suspenseful film, but none of it is arranged in the correct order and the dominant overall tone of cynicism, McCarthy's overarching theme, makes it hard to behold as it schemes its way towards an unsettling climax.