The Counselor (2013) *

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Starring:  Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Rosie Perez

The plot:   An attorney becomes part of a drug deal that goes wrong and finds himself hunted by the people involved.

The Counselor is a waste of an A-list cast and a master director on a Z-grade film.     The actors are saddled with long, Deep speeches about life and death.     There are no characters, good or bad, (although most are bad) that we care about.    The screenwriter is Cormac McCarthy, whose novel No Country For Old Men was adapted by the Coen brothers into a great film.      If The Counselor is any indication of his screenwriting ability, he should stick to novels.

In terms of plot and excitement, The Counselor is a dead zone.     The protagonist is The Counselor (Fassbender), who is referred to as "Counselor" and doesn't seem to have a first name.     His wife (Cruz) doesn't even refer to him by whatever his first name is.     It's tough to see what his motivation is for entering into a drug deal with a Mexican cartel.    He seems to earn enough money to afford to buy his wife a 3.9 karat diamond ring.    (Or does he need the money to pay for it?)     My advice to The Counselor would be to buy something cheaper so you don't have to get in bed with a ruthless Mexican drug cartel.

But get in bed he does, and soon enough, a courier hiding a $20 million stash in his motorcycle helmet is beheaded and the money stolen.     Because the courier's mother is a client, The Counselor is being held responsible for the money and becomes a target.     The Counselor soon realizes that the cartel is immune to reasoning.      The whole business of how the courier ends his life without a head is something Wile E. Coyote would dream up in order to snare the Road Runner.     Get this:   A guy stretches a thin, sharp wire across a deserted highway.     When the motorcyclist speeds by, off goes the head.     How did they know the courier would be taking that road?    If a truck or another vehicle came by, did the guy have to set the whole thing up again?     How many times did this hapeen?   I would've preferred a scene where the guy, setting up the wire after an 18-wheeler ran through it, is run over by the speeding motorcyclist.    

Fassbender doesn't create a protagonist we have any feeling for one way or the other.    Brad Pitt shows up as a shadowy figure who warns Fassbender about entering into a deal with the cartel.     It is not especially clear what his function is.    Cruz is barely onscreen enough to care about her if and when she goes missing.     Javier Bardem recites painful dialogue while sporting a hairdo that looks like he stuck his wet finger in an electrical outlet.     And he thought his hairdo in No Country For Old Men was bad.    Cameron Diaz seems to be trying her best to have fun with such absurd material, but she too is saddled with dialogue like, "Truth has no temperature," which brings unintentional laughs.    

Who knows?  Maybe "Truth has no temperature" was kicked around as a tagline for the movie poster.    I sincerely hope not.     But The Counselor doesn't want to be a simple thriller.    It wants to be Deep and Meaningful, thus having drug kingpins telling stories about grief, loss, and misery to others.     It's goals are loftier, but that doesn't make the film any better.     I sometimes say that mindless action thrillers shouldn't be so mindless.     I suppose with The Counselor I get exactly what I deserve.