Watching the star-studded Ridley Scott drug smuggling caper
“The Counselor” (**** OUT OF ****) is like paying to be a participant in a
“Scared Straight” program. “Scared
Straight” is that fear-inducing program where juveniles are given a taste of
what to expect if they pursue the path of evil. Hopefully, the convicts who intimidate the
juveniles in “Scared Straight” frighten them out of a notorious life of
criminal endeavor. In “The Counselor,” a
well-to-do Texas attorney gets himself caught up in a narcotics smuggling
scheme and learns first-hand the meaning of Murphy’s Law. Everything that can go wrong for our ill-fated
protagonist does go wrong, and the hardened hellions who surround him warn him
at every turn to back out before it is too late. Michael Fassbender top-lines a stellar cast
of familiar faces that include Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Oscar-winner Javier
Bardem, Brad Pitt, Rosie Perez, Rubén Blades, and Goran Visnjic. In most Hollywood crime melodramas, the good
guys win in the end, but “The Counselor” has no winners except its toxic felons. If you abhor movies were evil triumphs over virtue,
“The Counselor” is definitely not for you. You aren’t tempted to sympathize for anybody. “Alien” director Ridley Scott and Pulitzer
Prize winner author Cormac McCarthy have combined their considerable talents to
craft a movie that is incredibly chilling.
For the record, Cormac McCarthy is the same fellow who wrote the novel
that the Coen brothers turned into the movie “No Country for Old Men". Brad Pitt’s death scene in “The Counselor” alone
is worth the price of admission if you can keep your hands away from your eyes.
The hero in “The Counselor” (Michael Fassbender of “The
Centurion”) is known only as ‘the Counselor.’
Nobody ever addresses him by either his first or last name. This El Paso attorney has wind in his
sails. Successful and savvy, he cruises
around in a convertible Bentley and appears to want for nothing. Happily, he has landed the lady of his
dreams, Laura (Penélope Cruz of “All the Pretty Horses”), and he dotes so
dearly on her that he flies to Amsterdam personally to choose the diamond for
her wedding ring. Little does Laura know
is that her handsome fiancé has gone into business with a couple of low-class
dastards living high off the hog. A shady
night club owner named Reiner (Javier Bardem of “No Country for Old Men”) who
has snorted one line too many and a smooth-talking cowboy, Westray (Brad Pitt
of “Thelma & Louise”), both warn ‘the Counselor’ repeatedly that he should
turn tail and light out. Indeed, “The Counselor”
amounts to a Biblical caveat to flee evil.
Our naive hero has bought himself a piece of a $20-million cocaine caper
with the shipment of smack destined to be delivered to Chicago. Meanwhile, beneath the border in old Mexico,
the cartel seals up their product in large, air-tight barrels and conceals them
in squat, heavy, septic truck that looks like it could go bumper-to- bumper
with an armored car in a demolition derby and win. The in-joke is that one of those barrels
contains the pickled body of a Colombian who has endlessly been shipped
back-and-forth like a joker in a deck of cards for whoever finds him. When he is found, he is resealed and shipped
off with a qualm. The bad guys get the
vehicle across the border safely without a hassle, but another bunch of thieves
later hijack the truck. Not only do they
steal the truck, but they also decapitate one of their motorcycle adversaries called
“The Green Hornet” with a wire strung across the highway! Death is as horrifically gruesome here as it
was in any “Saw” sagas. These guys and
their cronies don’t fare any better.
They are waylaid by another pair of cartel gunsels masquerading as Texas
Rangers and die in a fierce gunfight. An
innocent motorist driving up to the scene of the shoot-out by accident
desperately struggles to elude lead, but he doesn’t stand a chance of making a clean
getaway. The surviving cartel gunman
calmly reloads his machine-pistol and riddles the poor slob’s truck. Not even the innocent bystanders have a
chance in “The Counselor!”
“The Counselor” boasts an array of vicious but memorable
villains. Cameron Diaz of the “Charlie’s
Angels” epics stands out more prominently than either Javier Bardem or Brad
Pitt. The femme fatale that she plays
crossed the moral line between good and evil so far back that even if she
looked back, she would never see that line.
We are told the only thing that she remembers about her parents was the
sight of seeing them hurled from a helicopter at age three. Vulgar wench that she is, her idea of sport involves
turning her pair of pet cheetahs loose on jack rabbits in the desert at dawn. Malkina, as she is called, has cheetah spots tattooed
all over her back, loves to masturbate on her boyfriend’s Ferrari windshield,
and goes to confession as a joke to regale the priest with her tawdry
tales. As it turns out, she is the evil
mastermind behind the thief of the smack.
Who says women cannot be bad girls?
When scenarist Cormac McCarthy isn’t creating devilishly, overwrought
villains, he conjures up some of the most poetic dialogue that you will ever
hear. Meanwhile, Scott and “Crimson
Tide” lenser Dariusz Wolski have created a movie that on the basis of its
elegant cinematography will take your breath away when the hair on your back
isn’t standing up. Altogether, “The
Counselor” qualifies as a superb but corrosive crime thriller with harrowing
death scenes that you won’t forget after the rest of the action has faded from
your memory. There are no happy endings
here for anybody. Spectators who love to
challenge themselves to see how much offensive material they can swallow before
losing their cookies will probably be the only ones that will truly appreciate
Scott’s masterpiece of amoral horror.
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