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Oct 25, 2013 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

A lawyer referred to only as The Counselor (Michael Fassbender) plunges head-first into the dangerous world of drug trafficking. He’s in trouble and needs money for unexplained reasons; he backs a major drug buy with a charismatic drug lord (Javier Bardem) and a shady trafficker (Brad Pitt.) The deal goes south, and the Counselor and his fiancée (Penelope Cruz) find themselves on the run from a ruthless Mexican cartel.

The Counselor is the first film with an original screenplay by revered scribe Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, The Road, No Country for Old Men) and its faults are rooted in the script. Characters rarely speak in a natural, lifelike manner; their dialogue is waterlogged with by over-stylization. Sometimes it works, when lines roll from the actors’ tongues like vulgar poetry; just as often it’s laughably impenetrable. (Cameron Diaz, who plays Bardem’s nymphomaniac, cheetah-raising girlfriend, speaks primarily in obtuse epigrams.) On top of that, the south-of-the-border cartel dealings—some of the film’s most intriguing sections—are presented without subtitles, so it would be advisable to brush up on your underworld Spanish phrases before going in.

The film’s world is suffocatingly dark, and the intentionally vague elements—the language, the lack of back story, and the many double-crosses that occur off-camera—increase its overwhelming sense of hopelessness. There are several moments of horrific violence; all of it heavily foreshadowed, but made no less jaw-dropping by the numerous warning signs. The Counselor is an ugly, ugly picture, even despite its absurdly attractive leads. Cormac McCarthy fans will want to see the Pulitzer Prize-winner’s first work written directly for the screen, but it’s a story that could have used more space to breathe as a novel.

www.thecounselormovie.com

Author rating: 4.5/10