The Counselor
Ridley Scott's violent Tex-Mex action thriller is all mouth and no trousers. But it's quite a mouth: the original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy is (for a while) seductive, elusive and allusive. It's a sub-David Mamet Esperanto of tough-guy worldliness, hinting at a world of evil. Devotees of the Coens' version of his No Country for Old Men, with its horrible garotte scene, may feel their hearts sinking with the initial mention here of a hi-tech strangulation device, introduced in the opening reel on the same principle as Chekhov's famous act-one pistol. There's a crazy-paving mosaic of cast and plot.
Michael Fassbender is a yuppie lawyer, addressed only as "counsellor" in the American style, who has evidently gleaned info and contacts from the clientele to get him in on a huge Colombian drug deal. Penélope Cruz plays his super-sexy fiancee, Laura (an innocent civilian in this wicked world); Javier Bardem is the counsellor's goofy contact, Reiner; Brad Pitt phones in one of his cheerfully unworried wiseguy roles; and Cameron Diaz plays Reiner's sinister, badass girlfriend, Malkina. The narrative pings around as meaninglessly and entertainingly as a pinball machine at first, but the comic timing feels off, without the finish of Christopher McQuarrie's The Usual Suspects or, say, Tarantino's version of Elmore Leonard in Jackie Brown. McCarthy woefully runs out of ideas before the end of this long film, especially as far as poor Laura is concerned.
Despite its A list credentials, this film struggles to emerge from the shadow of Breaking Bad and No Country For Old Men.
Ridley Scott directs an original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy that hands cracking lines and a keynote car sex scene to Cameron Diaz but leaves Michael Fassbender and Javier Bardem flailing to flesh out cartoons.
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