REVIEW: The Counselor

Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Cameron Diaz has never been an actress with exceptionally wide range, but she can do strong work when utilized effectively. She was terrific in Bad Teacher, heartwarming in Shrek and absolutely terrifying in Vanilla Sky. However, she can do a ton of damage when she’s miscast, as evidenced by her stunningly awful performance in The Counselor.

Diaz’s line delivery is bizarre – like an alien pretending to be human – and it’s made worse by the fact that she’s trying out some inexplicable accent. It would be easy to ignore if she didn’t play such a pivotal role in the film’s plot, which means her casting completely derails the story director Ridley Scott and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy (making his screenwriting debut) are attempting to tell. Any momentum the narrative generates when she’s not on screen comes to a dead stop when she appears again.

It doesn’t help that she shares the screen with far superior actors, including Michael Fassbener, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt and Penelope Cruz, meaning she’s outmatched in practically all of her scenes. Any one of these issues could be overcome, but all of them? She contributes to destroying what could’ve been a bleak, haunting thriller.

Fassbender plays the unnamed title character, a lawyer who decides to take part in a one-time drug-trafficking scheme to solve his money issues and marry his beloved girlfriend (Cruz). The problem, as his associates Reiner (Bardem) and Westray (Pitt) repeatedly inform him, is that you don’t just dabble in an illegal operation run by murderous cartels. And anyone who is familiar with McCarthy’s work knows that none of these characters are in store for a happy ending.

Aside from the above rant about Diaz’s work as Reiner’s uninhibited girlfriend Malkina, the performances are all solid. Cruz doesn’t have much to do, but that’s by design as her character is the one decent soul in a world of sleaze. Fassbender underplays almost every scene, allowing the Counselor to be an unnerving blank slate. Even his wide, Joker-like smile is disconcerting since the happiness never reaches his lifeless eyes.

Bardem and Pitt’s supporting performances are the primary reason the movie works at all. As drug traffickers who know exactly what they’ve gotten themselves into, they accept their lot in life with a welcome amount of black humor. A scene featuring Westray and the Counselor discussing their predicament near a hotel pool is flat-out hilarious. That goes double for a scene with Reiner recounting Malkina’s intimate encounter with his car. Not in it. With it.

The narrative is likely to cause confusion for many, as Scott and McCarthy aren’t interested in spelling out story beats for viewers. The duo is more concerned about establishing a sense of creeping, dreadful inevitability and focusing on the characters’ philosophic speechifying.

I can’t really recommend The Counselor, even though I generally liked it whenever Diaz wasn’t around. However, fans of McCarthy – i.e. folks who know what they’re in for – will definitely recognize the author’s unique gift for dialogue and his absolute lack of sympathy for any of his characters.

The Counselor is rated R for graphic violence, some grisly images, strong sexual content and language.

Grade: C-