The Counselor (2013)

I’ve said elsewhere on this blog that Ridley Scott is my favourite director. I didn’t think anything could make me doubt that opinion. And then I watched The Counselor.

The Counselor is a 2013 thriller directed by Ridley Scott and starring Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz.

I went in to The Counselor wanting to like it. Sure, along the way, Ridley Scott has made some clunkers. Remember GI Jane? Hannibal? Thelma and Louise? Yikes, yikes, and yikes.

But sadly, The Counselor trumps them all for complete and utter shit. I didn’t like a single thing about it. The acting is atrocious, the dialogue is pretentious, the plot is needlessly convoluted and the film looks terrible. It actually reminded me of a Tony Scott film from the 80’s rather than a Ridley Scott movie. The film even opens with some curtains wafting in a breeze overlooking a Mexican vista. Fuck me, this film sucked in so many ways I’m having trouble even beginning to describe it.

Ridley Scott seems to desperately be trying to make a slick crime epic. Instead the whole thing resembles a fucking Lexus commercial. The first steaming pile it lays is a scene where Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz are watching her pet cheetahs hunt prey in the Mexican desert. They’re both wearing designer safari suits, and they sit there sipping cocktails while she pretentiously waffles on about a sunset. The entire scene is beyond ridiculous. These two nitwits are supposed to be some kind of uber-cool, pseudo-celebrity crime boss hipsters. Instead, they come across as two complete fuckwits.

It’s hard to take anything about the film seriously. One such aspect is the fact that Javier Bardem’s character looks like The World’s Biggest Douchebag. His shirts alone make you expect him to crack out some castanets and start dancing the fucking Macarena. You’re supposed to feel bad for him when the cartel guys catch up with him and blow his brains out. Instead, I was laughing my ass off.

But getting back to the worst part about Cameron Diaz’s character - her look. She has a cheetah tattoo on her back, and fingernails that look like claws. Wow. Subtle.

Of course she is supposed to be some kind of evil genius. She attempts to steal some drugs from a Mexican drug cartel but fucks it up along the way. However, this doesn’t stop her from stealing the money she wants in some of the most ridiculously complicated ways and doing away with anyone and everyone that can connect her to the crime. In the final scene she says hunters have grace, beauty and purity of heart. The film then ends with her saying that she’s famished. Oh right, in case I missed it with the film relentlessly slamming me over the head with it, she’s the hunter. Oh right! *smacks self in forehead* Jesus wept, I basically just wasted two hours of my life so Cameron Diaz could fuck herself with a Ferrari (don’t ask).

But enough about that. Onto the film. The film is one of those idiotic cinematic forays that pretends to contain a lot of substance, but is really just a slathering of style ladled on like brick cement. That’s fine I guess if all you demand of your films is slick nonsense that falls from memory like a discarded popcorn container as you walk out the door, but from a film maker like Ridley Scott, and actors like Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt, I’m sorry, I ask for a little more.

One example of the idiocy I’m referring to, is where Diaz hires a couple of thugs to steal from the Mexican drug cartel. In order to get the drug cartel’s vehicle to work, she has to obtain a special wire gizmo from a guy who for reasons that only serve the plot, likes to ride his motorcycle really fast along deserted roads at night. And again, for reasons that only serve the ensuing plot, he keeps this gizmo…in his helmet. So how do these numbskulls seek to obtain this gizmo? They drive miles ahead of him and spend ages setting up a wire that will decapitate him as he rides past. We even get a stupid scene where the lead thug goes to a car dealership to measure the exact model of motorbike to make sure he gets the height of the wire correct. Fucking fuck me with a barge pole, why not just ambush the guy, shoot him dead, and take the freakin wire thingy? But no, that would make way too much sense so instead the guy spends ages measuring up this Wile. E Coyote roadside contraption while the audience is simply asked to ignore the fact that what, are these guys fucking psychic? How did they know this guy would ride down this particular road at this particular time? No one in his film ever does anything logically. It gets annoying really fast.

A scene that takes this stupidity to brutal extremes is where the 'Counselor’ (Michael Fassbender) is trying to get his bride-to-be (Penelope Cruz) out of harm’s way after his silly drug deal has gone pear-shaped and people are starting to die left right and centre. What does he let her do? She Googles a fucking hotel to hide out in. Fassbender is repeatedly warned earlier in the film about how ruthless and smart and conniving the cartel guys can be. So Jesus Christ Almighty, he didn’t think the cartel guys might be able to trace a goddamn Google search?

Anyway…another ridiculous death scene masquerading as something slick and clever and cool is how Diaz does away with Brad Pitt’s character. It’s set up early in the film where Javier Bardem inexplicably (most of his dialogue is inexplicably out of place or just simply clumsy exposition) tells Michael Fassbender about a cartel killing device that slowly garotes you. A wire is looped around your head and then a motor slowly tightens the wire.

So because this piece of dialogue is inserted so ham fistedly into an early conversation you immediately know that this little device is going to turn up later in the film. Brad Pitt is hiding out in London and Cameron Diaz gets a randomly hired thug to jog past and slip the device over his neck. Sure enough it tightens around his neck and he dies in front of some shocked onlookers. The death scene itself is not bad, it’s just (like everything else in the film) needlessly complicated. Again, just ambush the guy and blow his fucking brains out.

The story is complete nonsense, the dialogue is fucking drivel and Michael Fassbender is wasted. He’s basically an idiot who gets what’s coming to him. It’s hard to feel any sympathy for him whatsoever. He was already a well off lawyer, so what does he do? He has the bright idea to suddenly get into the drug business. But does he organise some domestic club deal no harm no foul? No, that’s not this guy’s style. Instead, he jumps into bed with a Mexican drug cartel. Gee whiz, Counselor, that sounds like a great idea. What could possibly go wrong?

Fuck me, this is a terrible film. But what’s more amazing to me than the fact it was directed by Ridley Scott, is that it was written by Cormac McCarthy. How not one, but two, incredibly talented people could fuck something up so tremendously is beyond me. Alas, here it is and its name is The Counselor.

Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)

I’ve watched this film twice now and my chess game still sucks. Maybe I’m bringing my queen out too early...

Searching for Bobby Fischer is a 1993 drama film directed by Steven Zaillian and starring Max Pomeranc, Joe Mantegna, Ben Kingsley and Laurence Fishburne.

The most interesting scene in Searching for Bobby Fischer for me is where 7 year old chess prodigy Josh’s (Max Pomeranc) chess teacher (Ben Kingsley) lines up a pawn, rook, knight, bishop and king in front of him and asks him to choose which piece he is. Josh replies that he is none of them, that they are just pieces.

It illustrates that Josh, more than any of the adults in the film, realises that chess is just a game. It’s a point the film makes several times, and unlike most of the emotional elements of the film which are bordering on maudlin, it’s nicely subtle. Ben Kingsley’s character pretentiously waffles on about chess being ‘art’, Josh’s father treats it like a sport and becomes obsessed with his son winning trophies, and Josh’s friend Vinnie (an underused Laurence Fishburne) uses it as a hustle in blitz games in New York’s Washington Square Park. The adults don’t get that Josh doesn’t really care about winning or losing, or art, or how he is perceived by, or perceives, his opponents. He just likes to play chess.

I like the relationship between Josh and his father (Joe Mantegna). After Josh starts seriously winning tournaments, his dad forbids him to play speed chess in the park with Vinnie because his teacher insists it’s instilling bad habits in his play style and will ruin his tournament success.

The best scene by far is where his dad also realises it’s just a game and takes Josh back to the park to play a game with Vinnie. Vinnie baulks at Josh’s first moves (he opens with a predictable tournament strategy) and tells him “play from your gut, like you used to”, so Josh does, and quickly checkmates him.

The scenes in the park are great. Young Josh discovers chess by watching Vinnie and his mates play speed chess for money and drugs. I particularly liked that when they first head over to watch the games and you see it from his mother’s perspective, the camera focuses on the money changing hands. Then we cut to Josh’s point of view, and he only sees the chess boards. The money and the hustling are irrelevant to him; he’s just fascinated by the game. It’s a great use of perspective.

I wish the film had included more of the speed chess in the park scenes (it’s obvious a lot were cut for pacing) because they are not only the best part of the film, it would have helped to explain why people keep telling Josh’s parents to not let him play in the park. There are actually very few scenes of him actually doing that.

I also like how strong little Josh is throughout the film. I usually find kids in movies annoying, but Max Pomeranc plays real—life chess whiz Josh Waitzkin with a dignity far beyond his years. I like that when his teacher tells him that in order to be the best player he must learn to hate his opponents. Josh just shrugs and says “but I don’t.” His teacher then insists that his idol, Bobby Fischer, hated his opponents. Josh tells him “well I’m not him.”

Unfortunately the film jettisons the subtlety a few times. Probably the worst instance is where Josh’s dad moves the chess trophies from the mantelpiece into Josh’s bedroom (the film makes a point earlier of showing his father gloating over the trophies with Josh nowhere in sight). This scene would have worked far better without any dialogue. But no, because we audiences are morons we get a tearful line from Joe Mantegna, “these are yours now, son.”

We also get a ridiculous scene where father and son stand in the rain having an emotional conversation after Josh deliberately loses a game because he’s terrified that if he becomes a chess champion everyone will hate him. The impact of the scene is diminished somewhat because they stand under a torrential downpour when, moments earlier, they were safely inside a building. It’s sledgehammer subtlety that just doesn’t work.

The film is at its best when it’s not dishing up the emotional manipulation with a soup ladle, and thankfully the underlying theme that young Josh is more emotionally mature than most of the adults pushing and pulling him in various directions is done with some subtext, and so becomes the film’s strongest point.

The best moment in this regard is during the final game where Josh faces off against his nemesis – another chess-whizz kid – in a tournament grand final. Josh, seeing 12 moves ahead and knowing he’s won, offers his opponent a hand shake (signalling a draw) and his eager father and teacher watching on through a video monitor both reel at first asking “what the hell is he doing?” Josh knows he has won the game, so he doesn’t feel the need to ‘hate’ his opponent by humiliating him.

It could have been a little less ‘coming to terms with things’, but all in all Searching for Bobby Fischer is a strong film with some decent performances. Two hours well spent.