In Over His Head

Ridley Scott’s The Counselor was meant to be Michael Fassbender’s big 2013 film.

Instead, the Cormac McCarthy-written story (based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer’s first and – once upon a time – unsold script) about a lawyer (the Fass) who decides to take a walk on the wild side, by getting involved in a cartel drug deal that just doesn’t end well for most of the film’s cast, generously and puzzlingly gives his co-stars – Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, and Brad Pitt – enough to do to make us think the film is theirs.

But, then again, not enough, otherwise the powers that be woulda called this one something else like The Innocent or The Conniver or The Eccentric or The Cowboy.

And I kinda love it. I think.

I expected this one to be a pretty straightforward proposition, you know...full of McCarthy-esque flights of writerly fancy, alright, but not that big a departure.

Which, again, I think I am OK with. That is, when I make sense of it all for a moment.

There is so much going on in The Counselor. For starters there are the characters played by the aforementioned talent.

Fassbender’s never-named titular El Paso anti-hero is a cool, ambitious cat who, when the films starts, is joining the big leagues by going in on a drug deal through Reiner (Bardem, rockin’ yet another eccentric hairdo), a playboy-ish associate of his. How these two know each other is never quite fully, or clearly, explained in any of the rambling monologues McCarthy has his characters recite, but this much is clear: F----ups will not be tolerated.

Reiner explains this to the Counselor patiently and ominously, which makes for a really intense scene. The point is further reinforced by Pitt’s Westray, a cypher of a smooth-cowboy middleman. But then, perhaps in an effort to reminds us of the stakes at hand, the action seemingly shifts to the relationship between the Counselor and his new fiancé, sweetly naughty, yet innocent Laura (Cruz).

At which point Diaz’s cold and conniving Malkina gets involved, dispensing with her bitchin’ bon mots at every other turn (and doing things to Ferraris that are neither here nor there, plot-wise).

Is around that point, curiously enough, that the slow simmer that is The Counselor begins to boil. And that more and more characters begin to pop up on screen for a story-pseudo-advancing moment or a full-of-meaning-but-say-wha?! monologue (yo, Rosie Perez, and Édgar Ramírez, and Rubén Blades!), never to be seen again.

The action, already of the globe-trotting variety, moves to London, and then one of the main five players downloads his or her (telegraphed) motivation, shining a light on what came to be for the other four. And then the film ends.

It is all rather unsatisfactory and intriguing, but deserving of a watch, for it makes for a fascinating crash and burn (Scott directs with such vital style, and McCarthy knows how to get us to hang onto his every word, even not much comes from them). So do give this one a chance, in the comfort of your own home so that you can, should you want to, pause, sit, ponder (hard; and not just that Diaz-car scene), and keep going, which is something that the Counselor obvs did not do as he got into this game (which, like this nugget, ain’t for everyone).

My Rating **

Photo: 20th Century Fox.