The Counsellor ** (2013, Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, Rubén Blades, Goran Visnjic, Édgar Ramírez) – Movie Review

Michael Fassbender stars in Ridley Scott’s sinister, smart-looking 2013 neo noir film The Counsellor as a rich, successful wheeler-dealer lawyer, who decides to get involved in the drug trafficking business.

Michael Fassbender stars in the sinister, smart-looking 2013 neo noir film The Counsellor as a rich, successful wheeler-dealer lawyer simply known as ‘The Counsellor’, who decides to get involved in the drug trafficking business to maintain his smart lifestyle and look after his beautiful fiancée (Penélope Cruz), whom he is about to marry.

Brad Pitt co-stars as Westray, the crooked middle-man who warns The Counsellor that his drug trafficking plan has taken a bad turn and that he must urgently protect himself and his fiancée.

For some reason, The Counsellor goes recklessly ahead with the plan and doesn’t heed the repeated warnings of Westray or his other dodgy associate Reiner (Javier Bardem). Things, of course, then do not remotely go according to The Counsellor’s plan. Oh dear me, no.

Among The Counsellor’s many attractions on paper is that it is directed by Ridley Scott, who turns in an extremely smart-looking, grown-up movie as always (just great!) but infuriatingly tries to film a thriller like it’s an art work and ends up boring and mystifying us. There is intrigue in fact, and a lot of it, but much of the film isn’t actually remotely intriguing.

Perhaps the problem is that the excellent 80-year-old novelist Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men) is a first-time screenwriter here. And he writes his screenplay like it is one of his novels. It’s all character, mood, atmosphere and setup and hardly any darned story or action, at least not a story I could fathom out or follow.

He writes pages and pages of interminable, non-realistic dialogue that obscure and protract any plot that might be here. I say dialogue, but most of it is actually protracted monologue spoken to another of the actors looking puzzled. This is one great movie for folks who like to hear other folks talking.

That puts a classy bunch of really posh, audience-friendly actors in jeopardy with little means of escape. They are game for anything, but all their years of experience, all their reserves of charm, just won’t help them through this. Fassbender has the main role and he holds the screen broodingly and effortlessly, but as the plot kicks in he starts to over-emote, to off-key, alienating effect.

Meanwhile, with much less to do, Bardem and Pitt give hollow versions of their twitchy, creepy acting performances – they’re both really quite a long way from their best. Cruz doesn’t have much to do except look beautiful and worried as Laura, both of which of course she does just fine. But Laura’s just a dull cypher, a passive love object and victim figure. The film’s not about her at all. Cruz is wasted.

Taking over the character from Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz has the showiest role as the femme fatale Malkina. This includes a penchant for having car sex, not sex in cars, but having sex with them, or maybe just with a Ferrari. This is rather graphically illustrated in one’s of the movie’s supposed highlights, that turns out to be one of its low-spots. Frankly, it’s more risible than sexy.

Diaz is terrific, and she shouldn’t be doing this kind of embarrassing stuff. The trouble is that Malkina comes over as a nutjob, and so nothing concerning her character is going to come as much of a surprise. Diaz is way over-made-up, suggesting her character’s heights of sluttishness and depths of depravity. Diaz wisely lets her makeup do most of the acting for her. Even so, Diaz comes off best of all the actors.

The fates of other characters are also heavily suggested in the laboured, pretentious, over-blown dialogue, so what happens to them is not going to come as much of a surprise either. Perhaps this is McCarthy’s point. Fate is written. So anyone paying attention to what’s going on in the movie (i.e. the dialogue!) will know what’s going to happen. So, better obscure the outcome of the various strands of the plot by making it all bewildering and unfathomable. Too simple and too dense at the same time. That’s not a good trick to play, and it’s a turnoff.

I’m afraid I couldn’t follow the plot, and gave up after a while trying to. I wasn’t interested in listening to the dialogue and was disappointed by the performances of the actors, which doesn’t leave much to pass the time for two hours. With all its enigmatic dialogue and mood of menace, I have a feeling that the late Harold Pinter might have liked this movie, so let’s be kind and called it Pinteresque.

And yet, I think the movie will have a few fervent fans and admirers, too, who will totally disagree with me. Certainly the sinister, film noir atmosphere and cold blooded criminal world are achieved convincingly and stylishly. And this smart-looking movie’s always easy to watch and admire visually.

But somewhere here, hidden in the pages of the material, there could have been a great thriller along the lines of the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men. Just imagine if Tony Scott had been still alive to direct The Counsellor. He had an enormous flair for this genre, and Ridley Scott’s humungous talents lie elsewhere.

There really isn’t much action or even drama to speak of, but in two or three action sequences there are, Ridley Scott shows he can do this kind of thing brilliantly when he has to. These scenes are extremely taut, tense and imaginatively shot. If only the rest of the film were like that.

Because of the very special personnel here I’ve been looking forward to this movie for ages. I’m really sorry to say it but, for all their talent and good intentions, I think this is an ambitious, well-meaning misfire. But it’s still worth checking out.

McCarthy is also known for the novels All the Pretty Horses (filmed in 2000). No Country for Old Men (filmed in 2007) and The Road (filmed in 2009) and Child of God (filmed in 2013),

Cormac McCarthy (July 20, 1933 – June 13, 2023) wrote 12 novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, in the Western and post-apocalypse genres. He died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, aged 89. Stephen King said he was ‘maybe the greatest American novelist of my time. He was full of years and created a fine body of work.’

© Derek Winnert 2013 derekwinnert.com