The Counsellor (2013)

Time: 117 Minutes
Age Rating: Graphic violence, sex scenes and offensive language
Cast:
Michael Fassbender as The Counsellor
Penelope Cruz as Laura
Cameron Diaz as Malkina
Javier Bardem as Reiner
Brad Pitt as Westray
Director: Ridley Scott

A rich and successful lawyer, the Counsellor (Michael Fassbender), is about to get married to his fiancée Laura (Penelope Cruz) but soon becomes entangled in a complex drug plot with a middle-man known as Westray (Brad Pitt). The plan ends up taking a twist and he must protect himself and his soon to be bride as the truth of the drug business is uncovered and targets are eliminated.

There are often films that have a great cast that turn out to be huge success, the film has the directing talent of Ridley Scott, the acting talent of actors like Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem and its screenplay is written by famous author Cormac McCarthy. Unfortunately this film is a disappointment; however isn’t in my opinion a total failure (like some people think it is) with some decent performances, great look and music as well as the second half actually being quite good. However this is one of the most disappointing movies I’ve seen.

The script of this movie was written by Cormac McCarthy, who wrote books which got turned into some movies such as No Country for Old Men and The Road. After watching this movie I figured that he should stick to writing books because this screenplay isn’t that good, from what I’ve seen, this story would be better as a book and then possibly later adapted to a movie. The characters’ backstories aren’t exactly given so you can’t really understand much of why they do that they are doing, The first half of the movie isn’t very interesting and a lot of the dialogue is filled with metaphors; there may have been some sort of theme that this film is supposed to follow but it just wasn’t that well executed here, it just feels like padding. Nothing much seems to happen and it’s quite hard to follow the story as the film doesn’t seem to explain things, like how the Counsellor got involved in drug trafficking. The worst scene in the whole movie is when Cameron Diaz has sex with a Ferrari; even in any form of context, one has to ask why that scene was ever written. The second half of the movie is much better and seems to throw away the metaphors in the dialogue and more things actually start to happen; I’d even say that the second half is 8/10. The only problem I have with the second half is that the ending is a bit abrupt.

The actors do well with what they’ve got; as I previously mentioned some problems with the movie are that the characters’ backstories aren’t really given and the dialogue consists of a lot of metaphors. Michael Fassbender plays the main character and although his character doesn’t have much backstory given (not even his name is given) he gives a great performance. Brad Pitt is also a standout in this movie, personally I found his character more interesting but he was also pretty good as well. Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz also do pretty good with what they’ve got.

I quite liked the look of the movie, the locations are quite beautiful. The cinematography is pretty good with the exception of a car chase scene where there was a little shaky cam used. The music was also pretty good and seemed to be used quite well. The violence in this movie isn’t frequent but is bloody, it’s quite like No Country for Old Men and I personally thought it was well handled.

The Counsellor unfortunately is not a movie I’d recommend for everyone to see. The acting is great, the cinematography and music is pretty good, the thing holding the movie back is its writing. Ridley Scott has another movie coming out this year, Exodus but I don’t know how it will end up, hopefully much better than this movie.

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