The Counselor is really, really, really good trash. It’s trash elevated to a fine art, which has been the goal of B-movie muck-divers since the Poverty Row noirs of the ’40s. Prudes and humorless folk may linger on the trashiness and question the movie’s artistic purpose, and if that’s the case, the film provides plenty of ripe opportunities to walk out.
The rest of us will enjoy a dirty, filthy, sexy and star-crossed cautionary tale through a Southwestern world of drug trafficking in which an ostensibly innocent court-appointed lawyer breaks bad and suffers the consequences. For director Ridley Scott, following the silly portent of Prometheus, this desert neo-noir is a step up, sideways and to left; for screenwriter Cormac McCarthy, the hippest old guy in the country, it may be the most unbridled fun he’s had putting words together.
Michael Fassbender is the counselor of the title (that’s his only name in the movie), a nice guy who loves his girlfriend (Penélope Cruz) enough to travel to Amsterdam to buy her a diamond engagement ring. Despite a steamy and dermatologically intimate opening sex scene between these two lovebirds, we soon learn that their casting is subversive; the cinematic sexpot Cruz, here playing a God-fearing and dutiful lover, and the perennial on-screen deviant Fassbinder are the purest characters in this libido-drenched film.
But, for the counselor, avarice takes over rationality in the form of a multimillion-dollar opportunity to move drugs from south of the border into Chicago, a deal orchestrated with a pair of odd birds: nightclub impresario Reiner (Javier Bardem), an affable sleazebag with ostentatious shirts and a shock of gravity-defying black hair; and Westray (Brad Pitt), a skirt-chaser with a conspicuous black eye who dresses like Tom Wolfe in a ’50s Western. Reiner is currently living with the force of nature known as Malkina (Cameron Diaz), an immigrant from some exotic place who wears heavy eye shadow, a gold tooth, jewelry large enough to have its own zip code and tattoos of animal paws racing across her back. She owns a pair of pet leopards, but chances are she’ll eat you alive before they get the chance.
Scott’s narrative bounces between the counselor’s interactions with his strange new friends and the movement of the contraband, a bullet-riddled and corpse-strewn truck delivery that – gasp! – doesn’t follow its best-laid plan to the Windy City. These scenes constitute the only identifiable plot in The Counselor; the rest is dialogue-driven background and color, creating a division of drama not unlike Quentin Tarantino’s. For instance, there’s a narratively diverting but unforgettable chat between Reiner and the counselor, accompanied by racy visuals, about Malkina engaging in coitus with a Ferrari, and it must be seen to be believed.
But where Tarantino prefers snappy hyper-realism in his exchanges, Cormac McCarthy’s script is arch and stylized. Characters speak as strangely as they look, often in peculiar admonitions and weighty epigrams, leaving lyrical bread crumbs that characters will slip on, more than an hour’s screen time later, to their detriment. It rewards audiences for their patience.
As the drug plot runs afoul, the lives of the counselor, his betrothed and his business partners become increasingly in danger. Their free will is questioned and characters become chess pawns in machinations over which they no longer have control. It’s a big, big world out there, but under Scott’s camera even bustling streets become claustrophobic nightmares where enemies lie in wait like venomous snakes.
The Counselor is uncompromising in its brutal payoffs and the realization of its characters’ philosophical warnings. But every time you’re ready to compare the film to Bergman, Kurosawa or Shakespeare, it’ll do something really nasty, uncouth, or grindhouse-y that will leave highbrow viewers wincing in their seats. Just sit back and appreciate that you’re being played as much as these characters, and enjoy the ride.
THE COUNSELOR. Director: Ridley Scott; Cast: Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Brad Pitt, Rosie Perez, Bruno Ganz; Distributor: Fox; Rated R; Opens Friday at most area theaters