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.
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