Beneath its finely dressed yet pulpy exterior, there's a sour darkness that underscores every moment of The Counselor. Outwardly, the glitzy trappings of a wealthy lawyer and outrageously monied drug dealers with whom he keeps business company point to the can-have myth of America's dream. Inside, it's a philosophical nightmare when an easy win goes wrong and everyone begins to run from the psychopathic rage of the cartel's CEO. “You may think there are things we are incapable of doing. There are not.” A metaphor for life under America's corporate rulers: amoral, corrupt, failed?

Set in the Mexican border regions, this desert wasteland has long been a favourite of novelist / screenwriter Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men / The Road). There's a stillness about the environment that lets him ruminate on the human condition, punctuated with moments of murderous rage. In this case, a counsellor (Michael Fassbender) who, judging by his Bentley and the rock sized diamond he buys for his fiancée (Penelope Cruz), seems to have more than enough. Why then does he form an alliance with a terrifying drug dealer (Cameron Diaz), her awestruck business partner (Javier Bardem), and their edgy fixer (Brad Pitt). One of many, many questions raised by McCarthy's intelligent and provocative script.

Yet for every question there's a considered, lyrical response that without fail, fails to answer the very question it asks. After an hour of oddly cold calculation with little in the way of illumination, what has passed for heavy duty observation starts to get, well, a little irritating. What works in a novel is not making the leap to screen for McCarthy's first screen play, despite the best efforts of Fassbender, Diaz and Pitt. Ridley Scott's beautiful if distanced and increasingly mechanical approach to filmmaking only serves to expand the gulf between story and audience as characters converse in the least likely manner. When asked if she was being a bit cold, Diaz responds: “Truth has no temperature.” As you do.

Stylistic concerns and plot holes aside, the film always remains interesting, particularly when the counsellor is squeezed between the rock of desire and the hard place that is Diaz. Regrettably, his is one of the few human responses in the film, and one that makes his breakdown seem utterly plausible and totally unconvincing in this arch environment. Take Bardem's nervous fascination for his wife and her capacity to 'fuck his car' which we witness, graphically. As the The Counselor rolls into its second hour, more and more questions are asked of the narrative, the characters, where they're going and whether we want to go there with them.

McCarthy has a lot to say about the state of the nation, and most of it worth listening to. Issues of morality, misogyny, misanthropy, culpability and violence all get an airing. Unfortunately they simply don't present with enough conviction to get us past the mostly uninteresting, occasionally peculiar behaviour of his characters. Ultimately, The Counselor is one of those films you really would like to like a lot more than you're given reason to.


// COLIN FRASER

Previewed at Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney, on Friday 25 October 2013