The Counsellor ***

It’s hard to fathom the big picture of the anticipated Ridley Scott-Cormac McCarthy collaboration, The Counsellor, apart from the obvious that greed is bad news, as is being embroiled in the drugs trade at any level. As a thriller, it’s stuffed with well-intentioned but wordy statements uttered by a crowd-pulling cast looking rather grand, including Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz, in rather flash places (on the whole). However, the character ambiguity is utterly frustrating. Still, The Counsellor will be remembered for one car fetish scene, in particular.

The Counsellor (Fassbender), soon to be married to Laura (Cruz), gets more and more involved in the dangerous world of drug trafficking, even though he is warned about the fatal consequences by other key players.

This brief synopsis again highlights the ambiguity of the whole affair: None of the characters are what they seem, even the greedy Counsellor. We have no idea what makes the lawyer tick, except his woman and his money, and no gauge as to where our protagonist has come from to be in the mess he’s in now. This is both brilliantly realised and the film’s Achilles heel. Fassbender does the best he can as a broke man listening to one piece of advice – or muttering – after another. The fact remains that all the characters feel closed off, with no amount of monologues helping proceedings to unlock their personalities. The only one vaguely ‘open’ to interpretation is Bardem’s flamboyant drugs courier and businessman Reiner, with the Spaniard a tonic to watch.

Diaz as the mirror-taloned Malkina – note a new fashion craze after this – starts off rather promising and alluringly dangerous in a refreshing femme fatale role for the bubbly actress. However, as baffling as Malkina’s true identity actually is, this character begins playing to type by the end and we are still none-the-wiser. Diaz is nevertheless memorable as the Grace Jones-lookalike and THAT car scene will forever associate Diaz’s lady parts to a catfish, further cementing this as a milestone role for the actress.

That said the rest of the film is heavy on style with a strong odour of sexuality, perforated by moments of evil bloody-mindedness and gruesomeness. In all fairness, once you’ve been overstuffed on these superficialities, The Counsellor probably needs a second viewing to grab anything of significance to what is said in novelist McCarthy’s rather clunky script – if you have the patience (and the funds). The Coen Brothers’ scriptwriting expertise is sadly missed here after adapting McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men.

And that’s the problem; in trying to be too worthy and mysterious, in painting a menacing, faceless picture of the drugs trade and its collaborators, The Counsellor grabs then loses our attention. Maybe that’s best, in that there is detail to be mulled over but it’s mainly a smokescreen for what seems to be a rather lacking plot, however much you want it to be more.

3/5 stars

By @FilmGazer

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