The Counselor - Il procuratore

Normally, I fully appreciate bleak films with utterly despicable characters that leave you thinking rather than leaving the theater with a smile on your face, joyous to the fact that the hero saved the day yet again. Sorry, that's not my kind of story as overdone as it is. I prefer brutal realism where humanity is depicted in a much less phony manner. That's exactly what The Counselor promises as its characters take fairly regrettable paths- flawed people that make mistakes in a criminal environment. Some are more oblivious to it (or outright merciless), and some are much more humane in their methods. At first glance, it seems as if it's impossible for The Counselor to be proved a disappointment from the looks of its amazing cast (the likes of Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, Brad Pitt, and Penelope Cruz), exceptional director with a credible resume, and a totally prestigious author signed on for his first screenplay. In addition, it appears to be a crime thriller, which definitely commences my adrenaline rush because it's personally my favorite genre.

Unfortunately, this film is a perfect example of "don't judge a book by its cover" (whether positively or negatively; people just love positivism so they usually associate the idiom with negativism). To simply put it, the story is a complete mess right from the start. We have our main character who goes by "Counselor" (played by one of my favorites, Michael Fassbender) confusingly dropped into this situation. How did he end up in this predicament? Why did he choose to pursue such a perilous and illicit path? Basically, the movie never explains anything. You're left in wonderment, attempting to figure out who is on whose side. Who wants to kill them exactly? Characters end up in random places, and the story never even bothers to explain how the two characters even know each other. The script just conveniently places two movie stars in one scene without an effectively developed context to service it. What follows are countless scenes where characters engage in conversation, vaguely discussing the circumstances.

The dialogue also feels vastly strange because the characters don't talk like actual people do in reality. Their speech sounds quite literary as they spout metaphor after metaphor, coupled with complex vocabulary. With that being said, I had no issue with it at first. In that, I mean I held no issue with the style of speech. What I did have an issue with was the way the characters spoke in a way that fully befuddled the viewers. It's like only the characters are in on it the entire way without the audience's understanding. In essence, it makes for an inconvenient and confusing experience.

Speaking of the cast, Javier Bardem was really the only one that stood out to me. Frankly, Cameron Diaz had me bewildered. She's supposed to be from Barbados with an accent- See, I wasn't even sure whether she was sporting an accent or not. At times, it felt like she had an accent going on, and then in other moments, she was speaking fluent and clear English; so I have no idea what was going on there. Even then, the film could've easily hidden all these flaws by presenting us with a thrilling and suspenseful plot, but it actually turned out to be incredibly uneventful. The scope didn't feel as exciting as it was supposed to be, and it definitely wasted an incredible amount of potential. So yes, I'm absolutely saddened; this was one of my most anticipated films of this year, if not my most anticipated, and it ended up falling embarrassingly flat.

There were a few disturbingly violent scenes that boosted the film's tone, for lack of a better term, literally, and reminded us of the excellence of No Country for Old Men. You're also met with an outrageous sex scene that's equally disturbing and sexy for some, and those scenes might be the only snippets of The Counselor remembered down the road. The ending was also not very reassuring, cutting to the credits unexpectedly shortly after another monotonous and ambiguous conversation. The only decent element of this movie was its soundtrack, but then again, its quality could've just been determined in comparison to the oddity and nuisance that the rest of the film consisted of. In sum, the best way to describe The Counselor is "brutally unsatisfying." I felt no sense of satisfaction by the time it drew to a close, and everything simply felt so meaningless and forgettable. There's no question that it left a bad taste in my mouth, and I sincerely hope that Ridley Scott ups his game sometime soon.

The Counselor (Michael Fassbender) is a defense lawyer with questionable friends like Reiner (Javier Bardem). Reiner is a brash club owner living a lavish lifestyle and introduces the Counselor to drug trafficker Westray (Brad Pitt). The Counselor proposes to girlfriend Laura (Penélope Cruz). Reiner's woman Malkina (Cameron Diaz) is wild and outrageous. Meanwhile the drug cartel is transporting drugs in an old liquid waste tank truck. The Counselor has a client Ruth (Rosie Perez) in prison. Her son is connected to the drugs and he bails him out of a speeding ticket. Then things go terribly wrong.

I don't know what Cormac McCarthy wrote but what director Ridley Scott put on the screen is a mess. None of the four main characters are compelling. Fassbender projects no emotions. Bardem is way over the top still with a bit of Bond villain in him. Diaz is at least interesting, but Cruz is lost in this innocent sweet character. Brad Pitt comes in for a nice cameo. The story feels disjointed. There are bits of great ideas dispersed throughout the movie. However the bits don't add up to a compelling movie. All the A-list stars step on each other. It needs a grittier dirtier style to make this realistic and exciting. The action comes in a little too late. And Fassbender's coolness works against him here.

With three of his novels being adapted into critically acclaimed films, Cormac McCarthy has opted to try his hand at screen writing, and the fruits of his labor can be seen in The Counselor. Directed by Ridley Scott, the film stars Michael Fassbender as a high-priced lawyer who decides to dabble in something a bit less than legal in order to make some extra cash.

Against the advice of associates Reiner (Javier Bardem) and Westray (Brad Pitt), The Counselor (whose name is never mentioned) has somehow gotten himself involved in the drug trafficking business, although the film remains ambiguous about the specifics. Motivated by the love of a beautiful woman (Penelope Cruz) and the desire to maintain the lifestyle he's enjoyed for so long, he never takes into account the sort of consequences he may be subjected to, should things not go according to plan.

As the trailers for the film make abundantly clear, things do not, in fact, go according to plan - at least, that's what we're led to believe, since the details of The Counselor's involvement in said plan are never actually revealed. Despite being warned about this scenario from the very beginning, by nearly every other character in the film, The Counselor remains inexplicably shocked and stunned when things begin to unravel.

Ridley Scott's latest directorial effort is peppered with lengthy scenes that find The Counselor engaged in conversations with other characters as they try to impart kernels of wisdom, truth and philosophy. Unfortunately, first-time screenwriter McCarthy fails to realize that he's not writing a novel here. Despite the brilliance of his literary works, he doesn't take into account the fact that living, breathing people rarely speak in monologues, and there's scarcely an ounce of naturally delivered dialogue in any of these exchanges.

Indeed, if you watch closely you can actually see the actors struggling to wrap their heads (and mouths) around these complex conversations that are surely meant to sound intelligent, but come across as anything but. It's hard to find fault with the talented cast, but when working with such messy material, it's difficult to be at the top of your game.

Despite the script's shortcomings, The Counselor provides enough intrigue to keep things moving along for about 90 minutes or so. The problem, of course, is that the film grinds to a complete and utter halt with another half hour still left in the tank, and the final 30 minutes is some of the most excruciatingly boring cinema I've seen this year. It's a frustrating and befuddling experience, and I left the theater wondering exactly what the hell had happened, both in front of the camera and behind it.

-- Brent Hankins, www.nerdrep.com

This terrifically cast, sleek, glossy and intricately plotted Ridley Scott thriller from a Cormac McCarthy script wasn't a success and yet it may be one of the best things Scott ever did. "The Counselor" of the title is Michael Fassbender, a lawyer moving in high circles that includes drugs baron Javier Bardem and his lady Cameron Diaz as well as a shady 'cowboy' played by Brad Pitt and his involvement with such characters leads him into situations he might otherwise not want to find himself in.

It's typical McCarthy, even if it's not front rank McCarthy, and maybe the tortuous plot proved too much for both critics and audiences but it's a movie that uses its showy cast , (that also inclues Penelope Cruz, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, Edgar Ramirez and Rueben Blades), to excellent effect and thanks to Dariusz Wolski's cinematography it looks terrific. Best of all, it's a movie that takes familiar material and shakes it about in unconventional ways. In the acting stakes it's Pitt and Diaz who own the picture which certainly didn't deserve the critical thrashing it got at the time and is now ripe for reassessment.

With a star studded cast, featuring the likes of Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt, and directed by Ridley Scott, with a script from one of the greatest American novelists alive, Cormac McCarthy, obviously I went to see "The Counselor" on face value alone. Admittedly, aside from the fact that this is not a very cinematic endeavor, the first half of this film is pretty bad. That is to say the first act and a half is far too cryptic for its own good, with dialogue that is in love with its own double entendres and lines which sound as though they would be more at home in a novel than spoken aloud by human beings. But, if you're patient enough to stay with this film until the second hour, you will be rewarded by witnessing how McCarthy and Scott weave this almost action-less tale together, quietly guiding audiences into a brilliantly disturbing and hypnotic finale.

The performances (the standout coming from Bardem) are all fine here. These are all great actors, so what else would you expect? Same goes for the direction. The wildcard with "The Counselor" was always McCarthy's transition from novel to feature film scriptwriting; a transition that was a first act failure on the grounds of dialogue alone. In that same breath, his high caliber story of a lawyer who gets involved in drug trafficking and his masterful construction redeems him almost entirely by the time it's all said and done.

As I alluded to before, there is not much action here, which may give the illusion to some that sequences are occurring but nothing is progressing, which may also promote watch checking. But within this conversation based film, as much as I would have preferred the dialogue to have been handled with more subtlety, the subtext is always interesting, gaining its momentum from the converging stories within the second half.

Final Thought: "The Counselor" is the film equivalent of an artichoke. You either like it or you don't. And both are understandable. Maybe one day, once all of the critical heat dies down, history will look more kindly on this movie. But for now, there will be flaws within it that a majority of mainstream audiences just won't be able to forgive.

Written by Markus Robinson, Edited by Nicole I. Ashland