The Counselor, 2013.
Directed by Ridley Scott.
Starring Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt.
SYNOPSIS:
A slick lawyer gets in over his head after becoming involved in drug trafficking to ease his financial difficulties.
Cameron Diaz removes her underwear and slowly steps out of the bright yellow Ferrari. She climbs onto the bonnet, sensually, and performs a lurid sex act with the windscreen. Javier Bardem compares it to that fish that suckles on the fish tank. Cormac McCarthy wrote this. The writer of No Country For Old Men and The Road, maybe the greatest living writer, wrote Cameron Diaz having sex with a car. Of the many problems that plague The Counselor, the aimless script may trump the stale acting and poor direction.
Man of the moment Michael Fassbender stars as the titular “Counselor,” a lawyer who finds himself involved in drug dealing. In truth, this is simply an assumption. Somehow involved is Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz, a couple who may or may not be a drug cartel or just two incredibly wealthy sociopaths, Penelope Cruz who turns up every half an hour to cry and Brad Pitt, who does something – it’s never explained.
Maybe a decade ago, the idea of Ridley Scott crime caper with a script by Cormac McCarthy would whet the appetite but Scott’s recent form has been flawed to say the least and by all accounts, one would expect the film to be a front runner during the award season. It’s a great shame that such an impressive cast under the direction of the helmer of Alien and Blade Runner look lost. Fassbender and Diaz recount their lines as if they’ve just picked up the script and Pitt maniacally cackles while Fassbender looks on, panicking at the prospect that the film will taint his IMDb page for the rest of his career.
Fans of Breaking Bad should get excited as Hank himself, the great Dean Norris, appears alongside John Leguizamo for maybe a minute in a scene that brings absolutely nothing to the rest of the plot. I’m not sure if the array of strange cameos throughout The Counselor are deliberate or maybe Scott simply forgot that other cast members were involved. Toby Kebbell, who shines in almost every role he is in, appears for maybe a minute in a role that seems important but is abandoned and never mentioned again. Rosie Perez and Edgar Ramirez also turn up but suffer a similar fate as everyone else.
“To partake of the stone’s endless destiny, is that not the meaning of adornment.” Maybe Cormac McCarthy’s reputation gave him the right to write one draft and force Scott to direct the script. There are no lines that convince the audience that the characters are real – what we get instead is a thriller that may as well be written by an eight year old who snuck down the stairs and caught five minutes of a Lifetime Hallmark thriller.
The Counselor is a disaster, but a disaster that you can’t help but not watch. The script is melodramatic and unintentionally hilarious and the acting is wooden throughout. But hey, you get Javier Bardem compare Cameron Diaz’s genitals to a fish suckling the side of a fish tank and that is shockingly entertaining enough to get you through a tough two hours of forgettable dialogue and utterly insane violence.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Thomas Harris
Originally published November 17, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
