THE COUNSELOR (2013)

Genre: Thriller/Drama
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Dean Norris, John Leguizamo, Natalie Dormer
RunTime: 1 hr 58 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scene, Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: 20th Century Fox
Official Website:
 
Opening Day: 28 November 2013

Synopsis:  Legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott and Pulitzer Prize winning author Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) have joined forces in the motion picture thriller THE COUNSELOR, starring Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Penélope Cruz, and Cameron Diaz. McCarthy, making his screenwriting debut and Scott interweave the author’s characteristic wit and dark humor with a nightmarish scenario, in which a respected lawyer’s dalliance with an illegal business deal spirals out of control.

Movie Review:

Cormac McCarthy’s ‘No Country for Old Men’ may have made a gripping Coen brothers crime thriller, but his first produced screenplay after earning the love of Hollywood from subsequent adaptations like ‘The Road’ and ‘All the Pretty Horses’ proves that it is one thing to be a writer and quite another to be a screenwriter. Indeed, the characters in his self-penned ‘The Counselor’ not only talk a lot (and we might add, too much), they also do so with such pretentiousness that it’s hard to imagine any of them actually inhabiting more than a McCarthy novel.  

The titular character remains unnamed throughout the film, but Michael Fassbender plays him as a respectable American lawyer who is tempted by his financial circumstance to enter into some illegal business involving a Mexican cocaine cartel. The overwritten script brings in a whole lot of other characters with shady motivations – there’s Javier Bardem’s Reiner, a business partner of the counsellor who is instrumental in hooking him up with the wrong people; Reiner’s girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz) who turns out even more conniving and malevolent than Reiner himself; and last but not least, Westray (Brad Pitt), a shadowy figure whose involvement remains obtuse throughout the movie.

McCarthy’s idea of building character relationships is to get them to engage in lengthy conversations and wax philosophically about his signature themes of greed, death, choices and consequences. The eloquence however rings phony and hollow, sounding exactly as if a writer typed them – though admittedly if listening to lines like “truth has no temperature” from Diaz when she is accused of being “cold” gets you tingling, then you will be in for a treat. Otherwise, the dialogue is affected as can be, not least because there are at least two lengthy expositions on morality, mortality, regret and even Heavenly redemption.

In the midst of all that capital W writing, the venerable Ridley Scott seems genuinely lost and befuddled. There is hardly any visual momentum to the scenes when all the characters are doing are primarily talking, and because the manner in which they talk makes it seem as if they could go on and on, the transitions in between scenes feel awkward and unwieldy. In between, Scott prettifies the images to show off his character’s lavish lifestyles, which his ‘Prometheus’ cinematographer Dariusz Wolski ensures are a sight to behold. But when he does get a break from the prose, Scott indulges the borderland noir with casual violence, staging not one but two bloody beheadings that we warn you are pretty graphic.

Speaking of beheadings, you probably won’t care much for one of them, but the other, set in a busy street in the heart of London, will probably take you by surprise – not just for how bloody it is, but also why that said actor would agree to such a sequence. But we suspect, most of the actors probably signed on because of the pedigree, and then realised how lacking in clarity and plausibility the script was. Still, they make the best of what they have, though in different ways. Fassbender tries hard to convince, but his earnest intentions are somewhat undermined by the sheer cartoonish nature of Bardem’s over-the-top getup as well as Diaz’s similarly overdone femme fatale.

And so despite a script by a Pulitzer prize winner, a terrific ensemble cast and Ridley Scott at the helm, ‘The Counselor’ is a frustrating example of under fulfilled potential. One sort of guesses what McCarthy intended with this screenplay, but his own indulgence and lack of familiarity with the language of film just makes this a writer’s exercise and nothing more. It isn’t Scott nor the cast’s fault that the movie unfolds with a distinct lack of drama, urgency or purpose. Like we said at the beginning, it’s one thing to be a good writer and quite another to be a good screenwriter. McCarthy clearly isn’t yet a jack of both trades. 

Movie Rating:

(An artificial exercise in phony eloquence, this crime thriller suffers from the weight of novelist Cormac McCarthy’s own expository indulgences)

Review by Gabriel Chong