Why was Ridley Scott’s ‘The Counselor’ such an utter disaster of a film?
The 2013 film The Counselor had all the ingredients to make it one of the best movies of the year. Ridley Scott was on directing duty and had the excellent cast of Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt at his disposal. None other than Cormac McCarthy, arguably the greatest living English language writer, also provided the screenplay. However, the project resulted in an utter disaster. Lacking an engaging plot, The Counselor was visually unstriking, and drew rather terrible performances from its undoubtedly talented cast. The fact that it had such significant players attached to the project makes the final product all the more disappointing.
The Counselor told of a high-end lawyer – played by Fassbender – who gets involved in a drug deal at the US/Mexico border with Bardem’s character, Reiner. Naturally, the deal goes wrong, which brings the safety of The Counselor’s fiancé into jeopardy. On the surface, there ought to have been all the features of a classic McCarthy story, but the film depicted the plot in complete and utter boredom, with far too many typical tropes of the Mexican drug cartel in tow.
The film opens with a ridiculous sex scene in which Cruz begs Fassbender to “fingerfuck” her in an overly intensified showing, suggesting to the audience that their relationship is based on little more than sexual attraction, leaving the necessity for us to sympathise with The Counselor when things for his fiancé go bad wholly barren.
In fact, there is far too much emphasis on sex, with the opening scene to one in a strip club in which Bardem’s character rather unnecessarily details one of his friends inadvertently getting laid. The worst instance of over-gratuitous sex, though, comes when Reiner relays the time his girlfriend (Diaz) spread her “pussy” over the windshield of his supercar until she has an orgasm. The whole ordeal is baffling and provides next to nothing to the plot or the interrelationships of the characters.
It paints McCarthy in a poor light (and admittedly, he painted that picture himself) as a horny old man who wants to see his fantasies come to life on screen. It’s rather odd to see a McCarthy work in this manner, given the excellent adaptations of his novels The Road and No Country for Old Men, and also the wonderful film version of his play The Sunset Limited, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson.
The other great issue with The Counselor is the dialogue. McCarthy’s prose works are known for their realistic, everyday dialogue mixed with long-winding yet beautiful, philosophical rambles that occasionally border on religious fervour. However, the dialogue in The Counselor is flat as can be, doing little to elevate the excitement of the narrative, perhaps arguably barring Pitt’s performance and a minor role for Tony Kebbell (although his character’s appearance is rather pointless).
As for the latter, we often find moments of drawn-out philosophising within the film – which are normally the best moments in a McCarthy novel – but their inclusion next to drab and tedious dialogue makes them feel completely out of place, in there merely to reinforce the themes and motifs of the story when the narrative itself cannot implicitly state them.
When rewatching the movie, I was stunned that this was indeed a work directed by Ridley Scott and written by one of the greatest authors of all time. The cast would have no doubt been excited by their prospective involvement, especially given the prior success of McCarthy’s previous adaptations. However, I couldn’t help but feel that even they, upon revisiting The Counselor, will have recognised that they had just given some of their worst performances in one of the worst films of the century.
