The Counselor

If you take a look at this poster and the trailers for The Counselor, you may notice that it is heavily reliant on three (or probably seven) individuals - the five main cast members, director Ridley Scott, and writer Cormac McCarthy delivering his first screenplay. And that's pretty much all the film has to offer. It never reveals anything, never develops properly, and most of all, never gives us a reason to care.

The lawyer only identified as "Counselor" is thrust into the dark and seedy world of drug trafficking through his association with shady characters like Javier Bardem's philosophical Reiner and Brad Pitt's Westray. Scott and McCarthy become more interested in seeing how intellectual and thought-provoking these men can be through their ominous and detailed accounts of the business they're in, yet it is hardly ever done to advance this narrative so much as it is to try and be as self-indulgent as possible. Perhaps, in the back of their minds, they wanted to show how someone like the Counselor could go from being one particular man to another after stepping into the bad business, but they fail to even allow for a connection to the character.

A heavy amount of focus falls on Cameron Diaz as the obviously sinister Malkina (presumably McCarthy's dim-witted attempt at an "exotic" name), who is actually somewhat of an interesting character, until it's clear she's there mostly for fanservice and moderate closure. Diaz doesn't get to do as much with this kind of character as one would hope, and no amount of car sex (that is to say, actual sex with a car) can fix that. The other major female, Penelope Cruz's Laura, is mostly in the distance as everything unfolds. Additionally, the other two women who have more than 10 seconds of screentime are a prison inmate and a pawn used to seduce Westray. McCarthy clearly has some kind of issue with women, making it clear from the get-go as Reiner expresses his distrust and fear of Malkina to the Counselor. Still, you would think McCarthy, having been married twice, would at least know more about a woman than to use them as cookie cutter characters.

The whole film is basically one giant missed opportunity. There appeared to be room for more to play out, but instead, Scott and McCarthy only serve to remind others that the people you think you know are backstabbers and liars, and they do this through an endless array of smarmy dialogue. In short, The Counselor is almost literally a perfect example of all talk and no action.