The Counsellor
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz
Length: 117 minutes
Country: USA
The Counsellor is a film with a rather impressive pedigree. Ridley Scott working from a script written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Cormac McCarthy, whose words are uttered on screen by one of the best looking casts ever assembled – these are intriguing elements to say the least. While there was plenty to get excited about, there was still a sense that we should tread cautiously around this material. Scott is a director who has not had the best track record of late, and McCarthy’s prose has always had a polarising effect. As a result, both of those concerns have materialised in the final product. Yet, at the same time, that final product is one of such bizarre complexity and ugliness that you can’t help but be in perplexed awe of it.
One of the main issues with the script is the lack of a definite plot. The plan executed is hard to keep a track of, and motives are not as fully fleshed out as one would desire. But I do believe that is very much the point. This is a tale of human savagery and avarice. We have to simply take the fact that every character’s motivation is focused on that one deadly sin; Greed. Michael Fassbender plays the Counsellor, a man who is very much in love with his fiancée Laura (Penelope Cruz). He is also a man who is looking out for the next big moneymaking opportunity. This leads him into the world of drug-trading. Teamed up with night-club owner Reiner (Javier Bardem) and negotiator Westray (Brad Pitt), a deal with the Mexican Drug Cartel all appeals to be running smoothly. That is until Reiner’s devious and driven girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz) exacts a plan that places the Counsellor and his partners in the Cartel’s crosshairs.
McCarthy is a writer who has always had an interest in constructing environment as a character, something that I was anticipating to happen in The Counsellor, as surely the cinematic form would give heed to a visual atmosphere. Instead, what we have here is a very dialogue driven affair, and Scott seems to struggle with the staging of such material. The opening hour or so is incredibly repetitive in terms of its structure and content. Each conversation is driven by ominous warnings of what is going to occur later on in the dark proceedings, and Scott directs each scene in exactly the same fashion, never allowing each new conversation to have its own identity. A few establishing long shots, moving in to close-ups, whack on an ominous score near the end of the conversation to connate that this will be important later, and then move on. It is only once Malkina’s plan kicks in that writer and director seem to synchronise.
McCarthy’s world of the US/Mexican border is a fever pot of sin, sex, murder, and betrayal, and it’s one that brews a potent energy
Scott does find room to excel in the more straightforward thriller elements of the script – an assassination scene in London shreds the nerves very efficiently. There still remains a problem however, when the stakes are raised and people’s lives are at risk, it is rather hard to find any reason to care. These are individuals who have sealed their own fate by attempting to negotiate in a world which they have failed to truly understand. Fassbender does devastation well, and Bardem has a lot of fun, but no one is worthy of your sympathy. The only character who perhaps would be is Penelope Cruz, but not enough time is dedicated to her to establish an emotional link with the character who appears to be the only innocent in this world.
McCarthy’s world of the US/Mexican border is a fever pot of sin, sex, murder, and betrayal, and it’s one that brews a potent energy. He forms character relationships that deal with an intriguing power play between the sexes, an aspect that allows Cameron Diaz to have a great deal of fun in her role; she easily has the best lines of dialogue and comes out on top in the performance stakes, proving to be very apt at delivering the rhythm of McCarthy’s dialogue.
There are plenty of themes at play in The Counsellor, making sure the dish is never dry, but there is no denying that it is one hot mess. But it is an absorbing hot mess at that. It may take its time, but the film manages to find a way to almost intoxicate you. It is a complicated, uncomfortable, utterly brutal, fever dream of a movie. You’re unlikely to see anything else like it, and that is probably for the best. Scott and McCarthy have constructed an intriguing piece, which seems to suggest that these two greats are somewhat past their prime but can still deliver a work that is utterly fascinating and unlovable at the same time.
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