THE COUNSELOR (117 min, MA)
The name Cormac McCarthy is
synonymous with bleak, depressing
ruminations on the nature of humanity.
The author is not an optimist when it
comes to assessing the character of
people in difficult circumstances and
seems to suggest baser instincts lurk
within us all, barely held in check by a
thin veneer known as civilisation.
The Road was his despairing take on a
post-apocalyptic Earth ravaged by some
unexplained environmental catastrophe,
while No Country for Old Men featured
a lawless world south of the Tex-Mex
border in which an ordinary bloke
stumbles across some drug money,
claims it, then finds himself enmeshed
in a criminal underworld of which he
has very little knowledge and even less
comprehension of the danger in which
he’s placed himself. Both books were
turned into excellent movies, by John
Hillcoat and the Coen brothers
respectively.
Veteran director Ridley Scott (Alien,
Prometheus, Gladiator, Blade Runner)
jumped at the chance to direct
McCarthy’s latest work, The Counselor
(which is, incidentally, the author’s first
original screenplay), which was
completed last year. Thematically, it
shares much in common with No
Country for Old Men’s central idea that
the protagonists are in way over their
heads.
Michael Fassbender (Prometheus,
Centurion, Shame, Inglourious
Basterds)plays the titular character, a
lawyer tempted to make his own illgotten fortune after resisting such urges
while representing various
Mexican/Texan criminal types years
earlier. What drives him is ostensibly a
desire to provide a lavish lifestyle for his
gorgeous girlfriend Laura (Penelope
Cruz), whom he loves dearly. However,
his real motive is greed; there’s no
mistaking the cocky, envious way in
which he ogles the palatial dwellings of
flamboyant friend/drug boss Reiner
(Javier Bardem, in his second McCarthy
film after No Country for Old Men). He
wants to settle his debts too, thinking
that a one-off drug deal will be enough
to set himself up as a respectable
nightclub owner. He brushes off
Reiner’s warnings that once involved in
this “business” there is no
easy way out-particularly if
something should go wrong;
in other words, don’t get
mixed up with these people!
The word “cautionary” is
bandied about, not only by
Reiner, but by another
successful drug middleman,
Westray (Brad Pitt), but the
Counselor (strangely not
given a name) ignores them
all in deliciously hubristic
fashion.
As we learned with earlier
McCarthy texts, things
inevitably go wrong and
suddenly the Counsellor is
scrambling to make things
right (his problems begin
when he pays the speeding
fine of the imprisoned son of
his client, played by Rosie
Perez; the kid is freed, but as
fate would have it, he’s a key player in
the subsequent deal gone wrong, which
makes it look to the drug cartel bosses
that the Counsellor has double-crossed
them). But everywhere he turns he hits a
brick wall, with all his associates
reminding him that the world he chose
to enter so arrogantly is completely alien
to anything he has ever experienced- and
that the people who run that world are
capable of ANYTHING.
The movie captures brilliantly the
suffocating sense of panic that envelops
the Counsellor and, as is brutally
consistent in the worlds McCarthy
creates, there is very little prospect of
anything remotely resembling a happy
ending for those who choose to associate
with these horribly amoral people
(personified by Cameron Diaz as a
ruthless, manipulative player in this
high-stakes game, who appears to model
her behaviour on that of the pair of pet
cheetahs she owns).
There’s no going back.
Indeed, the film suggests the best that
decent people can do is stay out of the
way, that the big crooks (whom we
never see but loom over proceedings
like an omnipresent, malevolent
shadow) are too powerful to take down
(their complete lack of respect for life is
the key to their cruel, criminal success)
and that those fighting the good law
enforcement fight are doomed to fail. It
is also hardly a film which will please
the Tex-Mex tourist industry.
Some may used hackneyed, overused
words like “misogynist/misandrist” ( the
old “all men are greedy liars and all
women manipulative schemers”
schtick)to describe the film; I’d say it’s
more misanthropic (as is much of
McCarthy’s work): he just doesn’t see
much goodness in humanity, driven as
so much of it is by pure avarice, greed
and the lust for power/subjugation of
others, characteristics which, McCarthy
suggests, make humans the most
despicable beings on the planet (and the
architects of its inevitable
extinction/doom).
The film has received some bad press
(admittedly, its dialogue, heavy with
dense philosophical musings, demands
inordinate attention; the terrible things it
depicts happening to good and bad
people are extremely grisly and
upsetting, particularly with a nasty
device called the “bolo”) but I am
confident repeat viewings will reward
those prepared to sit through its inherent
unpleasantness and it will, in time be
recognised as a great film. To deviate
from the remorseless narrative path it
takes would have made the film a
copout. It isn’t Scott’s or McCarthy’s
job to give audiences what they wantthey must create a piece of work which
is true to its narrative philosophy...and
boy have they delivered!
Rating: 8/10
The Counselor photos: Flamboyant
crime boss Reiner (Javier Bardem) in his
palatial headquarters with mysterious
girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz, top);
the Counsellor (Michael Fassbender)
proposes marriage to girlfriend Laura
(Penelope Cruz, middle);
The Counselor’s actions place
everything-and everyone- he cares about
in jeopardy (bottom).