Review: The Counsellor

Um…I’ll do my best here, folks. Michael Fassbender plays the title character, who is never called anything else in the film. He’s a Texan lawyer with a lovely fiancé (Penelope Cruz) and a stupid belief that it’s a good idea for him to make some money through a drug deal with his more experienced partner Reiner (Javier Bardem), and cowboy hat-sporting middle man called Westray (Brad Pitt). Things don’t go according to plan, including something involving the no-good son of The Counsellor’s imprisoned client (Rosie Perez) causing big problems for The Counsellor and anyone close to him. Cameron Diaz turns up as Bardem’s cynical, femme fatale girlfriend who ain’t no dummy, Bruno Ganz turns up as an Austrian diamond jeweller, Sam Spruell plays a nasty member of the drug cartel, and Ruben Blades is a kingpin called ‘El Jefe’.

Some people might like this 2013 crime flick from director Ridley Scott (“Alien”, “Blade Runner”, “American Gangster”) and author turned screenwriter Cormac McCarthy (who also wrote the novel that was the basis for the overrated “No Country for Old Men”, as well as the interesting “The Road”). Those who like it are probably the few people who actually understood it. As for me, it wasn’t until about an hour in that I started to wade through the pretentious, incomprehensible coded dialogue to a point where I could follow the basics of the plot. Sort of. Even then I still felt like I didn’t really know the characters themselves. I understand that no one wants to be spoon-fed, but I’m sorry, I found McCarthy’s dense screenplay intensely irritating (the endless scene early on between Fassbender and Bruno Ganz was a real test of endurance and patience), and the film ultimately lost me. I kept watching, of course, but without much engagement, outside of the lively performances by Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem, who are well-cast and clearly having fun.

Not nearly as much fun, and frankly boring and blank is Michael Fassbender, and sadly he is our lead character. Unlikeable, but also underdeveloped, one never quite grasps onto his character, so that when things truly start to unravel and he gets in over his head, I simply didn’t care. Giving us more of a sense of who this guy was before he turns to crime, would’ve been extremely beneficial. Fassbender, a talented and often charismatic actor, doesn’t help in the slightest, he simply doesn’t register on screen beyond a boring ‘cool’ reserve (Before the fit hits the shans at least). Perhaps he was still trying to understand who his character was, too, but he just doesn’t earn our sympathy, and frankly doesn’t deserve it anyway, once we do get to know him a bit. I also didn’t believe that from what little I knew of his character that he would resort to criminal means just to keep up a lavish lifestyle for his lady love. Sure, he’s a lawyer and knows lots of crims, but so do a lot of lawyers and not all of them are the type to actually conspire with them on criminal endeavours. Scott, McCarthy, and Fassbender failed to make me believe it.

It’s a good thing that the studio execs nixed Cameron Diaz’s apparently horrendous Jamaican accent in post-production, because she’s pretty damn unconvincing in her role here as is. Some actresses can play ball-busting, unscrupulous, piranha-like women, but the sunny Diaz is as far from one of them as you can get. I’m all for actors trying to branch out, but as was the case in “Bad Teacher”, she’s terribly miscast and not remotely credible in the role. Sorry, Cameron, but you’re just too nice to play this. She and Bardem (and their two cheetahs!) seem to have walked in here immediately from filming scenes for Oliver Stone’s “Savages” that somehow didn’t make the cut and were spliced in here instead, though at least Bardem acquits himself entertainingly well. Diaz is terrible and her character is all unconvincing artifice. But no, they aren’t characters from “Savages”, though this film does share that (otherwise entertaining) film’s stupidity for hiring actresses to play highly sexual characters who are clearly unwilling to deliver the goods as required for their characters. Diaz’s character is supposed to be someone so uncontrollably erotically charged that she spread eagles and fucks a car at one point…but in other scenes carefully arranges her body so as not to show any nudity. There’s an obvious and frustrating disconnect there, and Diaz does a complete disservice to her character in that sense, and overall (She’s also starting to look seriously weathered, which doesn’t help her supposedly sexy character here). I’ve read Angelina Jolie was originally slated for the role, and she definitely would’ve been the right casting. But even then, the car-fucking, cheetah-taming role is too much of a put-on to really work. Poor Penelope Cruz is better, but rather wasted as less of a character and more of a plot point.

On the positive side of things, a flamboyant Javier Bardem looks to be having a lot of fun. He ain’t remotely subtle, but he brings energy that is otherwise sorely lacking in this talkfest. Brad Pitt is also genuinely good, even if I’m not entirely certain his character was necessary. Ruben Blades, not seen often enough these days, is excellent in a cameo, and even Rosie Perez is a lot less annoying than usual and quite effective. Also, if there’s a more evil-looking guy in movies today than Sam Spruell, I haven’t seen them.

Ultimately, although the film wasn’t exactly bad per se, it was simply too dense, enigmatic and aloof for its own good. I started out somewhat intrigued, but after a while, it really wore on me, and ultimately defeated me. I don’t want a film to spoon-feed me like a moron, but there comes a point where a film will piss me off by stubbornly refusing to make this any easier to follow when it easily could have done so. I wasn’t distracted whilst watching it, the film really is difficult to follow, and not good enough or engaging enough to make me want to try any harder. Being enigmatic is one thing, but when you carry that too far, you risk the entire thing being an enigma. Its dense dialogue and endless flowery speeches are insufferably pretentious (not organic to the kinds of people in the film, really) and pretty much impenetrable. Scott is an experienced (if erratic) filmmaker, McCarthy is a debutant screenwriter, the former should’ve seen the problem and corrected the latter. I mean, the basic premise of the film is, well, pretty basic. It’s the way that it has been told that is the problem. And if Scott was happy with things the way they are on screen in the film as is, well, like I said…he’s an erratic filmmaker.

I was simply at too much of a distance with this film. I didn’t enjoy it at all, certainly not enough to make me want to see it again to figure it all out. That’s the thing with films, if you want to make a film that improves on repeated viewings, you still need to make it work on the initial viewing. My first viewing simply wasn’t enjoyable enough. Perhaps you’ll make more out of it and enjoy the rather elusive experience. I found it aggravating and unenlightening.

Rating: C