The Counsellor. (18.)
Directed by Ridley Scott.
Starring Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt. 117 mins
Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, Michael Fassbender is a defence lawyer whose greed drives him into a murky endeavour with the Mexican drug cartel over the border. He is only ever called Counsellor, the deal is never explained and how it goes wrong is only vaguely alluded to; but we get a very clear view of the gruesome consequences of its failure.
Ridley Scott’s interpretation of an original Cormac McCarthy screenplay loses audience in an unfathomable world where Texas wealth and Mexican brutality are equally ostentatious and garish and everybody has a poetically loquacious turn of phrase and a line or two more of dialogue than they’d be afforded in real life. McCarthy’s script is marvellously contrary, full of I’m-Cormac McCarthy, I’m-80-years-old, America’s-greatest-living-writer-and-I’ll-do-what-I-want bravado. It’s fighting a battle with the hallowed dictates of good screenwriting, one which it mostly loses.
Its vision is dedicated to the notion that as nobody ever gets to see the whole big picture in real life, why should they in a work of fiction. A valid conceit but then in real life every other person doesn’t function as a harbinger of the apocalypse.
After a patience sapping first hour the second half bears some resemblance to the taut thriller of the advertising campaign. The star studded cast all acquit themselves quite well but none of them really register because there is something stilted in the material itself. Individual scenes and lines of dialogue have a cool, cold thrill to them but there is something amiss here. Afterwards you look back at all the marvellous sleek and gaudy elements on display and wonder if maybe the fault was yours; but while watching it nothing quite connects, and you are never quite convinced that there really is a larger picture beyond these fragments we are shown.
(The presence of Brad Pitt puts you in mind of last year’s Killing Them Softly which covered similar terrain a great deal better.)
Few people will thank Scott for this film but I have to say I wasn’t personally affronted by it, the way some were, and was happy to indulge it. I went in fearing yet another instalment of Why Did Ridley Scott Bother Making That, but you can see why this was worth having a go at. It has come to the stage where I find Scott’s misfires, where he tries something out of comfort zone (such as A Good Year) are preferable to the dull, dead competence he applies to most of his projects - or whatever was going through his head while making Prometheus.
Directed by Ridley Scott.
Starring Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt. 117 mins
Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, Michael Fassbender is a defence lawyer whose greed drives him into a murky endeavour with the Mexican drug cartel over the border. He is only ever called Counsellor, the deal is never explained and how it goes wrong is only vaguely alluded to; but we get a very clear view of the gruesome consequences of its failure.
Ridley Scott’s interpretation of an original Cormac McCarthy screenplay loses audience in an unfathomable world where Texas wealth and Mexican brutality are equally ostentatious and garish and everybody has a poetically loquacious turn of phrase and a line or two more of dialogue than they’d be afforded in real life. McCarthy’s script is marvellously contrary, full of I’m-Cormac McCarthy, I’m-80-years-old, America’s-greatest-living-writer-and-I’ll-do-what-I-want bravado. It’s fighting a battle with the hallowed dictates of good screenwriting, one which it mostly loses.
Its vision is dedicated to the notion that as nobody ever gets to see the whole big picture in real life, why should they in a work of fiction. A valid conceit but then in real life every other person doesn’t function as a harbinger of the apocalypse.
After a patience sapping first hour the second half bears some resemblance to the taut thriller of the advertising campaign. The star studded cast all acquit themselves quite well but none of them really register because there is something stilted in the material itself. Individual scenes and lines of dialogue have a cool, cold thrill to them but there is something amiss here. Afterwards you look back at all the marvellous sleek and gaudy elements on display and wonder if maybe the fault was yours; but while watching it nothing quite connects, and you are never quite convinced that there really is a larger picture beyond these fragments we are shown.
(The presence of Brad Pitt puts you in mind of last year’s Killing Them Softly which covered similar terrain a great deal better.)
Few people will thank Scott for this film but I have to say I wasn’t personally affronted by it, the way some were, and was happy to indulge it. I went in fearing yet another instalment of Why Did Ridley Scott Bother Making That, but you can see why this was worth having a go at. It has come to the stage where I find Scott’s misfires, where he tries something out of comfort zone (such as A Good Year) are preferable to the dull, dead competence he applies to most of his projects - or whatever was going through his head while making Prometheus.
