Blowhard, Esq. writes:
Given my distaste for him, I probably have no business reviewing this movie, the first based on an original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy. However, when I found out it was about a lawyer and was coming out around my birthday, well, I felt like I was being a given a gift. It even takes place in El Paso, Texas, a city I have a family connection to. I am not one to turn away such a portent. (Warning: Spoilers.)
Michael Fassbender plays a criminal defense lawyer who, in typical McCarthy fashion, is only ever addressed as “the counselor.” For reasons that aren’t made entirely clear, he gets involved in a major drug deal orchestrated by a nightclub impresario played by Javier Bardem, pictured above with his femme fatale wife played by Cameron Diaz. When the $20 million drug shipment is stolen, the counselor and all of his associates, including his newly-wed wife played by Penelope Cruz and a fixer played by Brad Pitt, are endangered.
Watching the film, I wondered what motivated McCarthy to make it. Did he see all those Oscars the Coens won for NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and decide he wanted one for himself? I guess writers are allowed to steal from themselves, but this film felt derivative of NO COUNTRY in many ways — greed getting an essentially decent man in over his head, a drug deal gone wrong, the Texas desert setting, Javier Bardem in a stupid haircut. But the main difference between the Coens’ movie and McCarthy’s (Ridley Scott feels like a hired hand here) is that here we have lots of scenes of actors mouthing McCarthy’s formidable dialogue. Your enjoyment of the film is directly proportional to your tolerance for speechifying like this:
The heart of any culture is to be found in the nature of the hero. Who is that man who is revered? In the classical world it is the warrior. But in the western world it is the man of God. From Moses to Christ. The prophet. The penitent. Such a figure is unknown to the Greeks. Unheard of. Unimaginable. Because you can only have a man of God, not a man of gods. And this God is the God of the jewish people. There is no other God. We see him – what is the word? Purloined. Purloined in the West. How do you steal a God? The jew beholds his tormentor dressed in the vestments of his own ancient culture. Everything bears a strange familiarity. But the fit is always poor and the hands are always dripping blood. That coat. Didnt that belong to Uncle Chaim? What about the shoes? Enough. I see your look. No more philosophy. And perhaps Schiller is right. When gods were more human men were more divine. The stones themselves have their own view of things. Perhaps they were piped up out of the earth in a time before any witness was, but here they are. Now, who shall be their witness. We. We two.
This monologue is delivered by a diamond merchant as the counselor is shopping for a wedding ring. The actors gave the dialogue their best shot, but they didn’t appear to be having that much fun, aside from Bardem’s admittedly funny soliloquy about Diaz rubbing her pussy on the windshield of his Ferrari. Although it’s merely a monologue in the screenplay, Scott wisely cuts to it in flashback thereby providing the only interesting scene in the whole film.
A few other thoughts:
- After a talky first act, the story kicks in during the second, but the narrative sputters during the the third because the screenplay loses focus. Fassbender’s counselor is a weak, ineffective protagonist who flails about without taking any decisive action. The true main character, the only person in the story with any will, is Diaz. John Dahl was smart enough to put Linda Fiorentino, not Peter Berg, at the center of THE LAST SEDUCTION.
- I wonder if Scott pointed out these story flaws to McCarthy? Probably not. Scott had the unenviable task of trying to make El Paso look glamorous. A check on IMDb reveals that he solved that issue by shooting in Utah and Los Angeles.
- Not that I want to make too much of this, but I couldn’t help but notice that, in a movie about the drug cartels that takes place in El Paso and Juarez, none of the major actors was Mexican. Bardem and Cruz are Spanish, Rosie Perez and John Leguizamo are Puerto Rican, while Ruben Blades is Panamanian.
- Brad Pitt’s near-decapitation makes a nice bookend to Paltrow’s in SE7EN, right?
Related
- Scott Foundas of Variety thinks this is one of Scott’s best movies.
- The New York Times interviews Scott about the movie.
- The New Yorker has a longer excerpt of the screenplay.
- Dean Norris, who has a small part in the film and seems likely to have a small part in every film that involves drugs in the southwest, admits that he didn’t understand the script. The article unfavorably compares THE COUNSELOR to Oliver Stone’s recent SAVAGES, but I thought SAVAGES was a far more entertaining entry in the white-people-versus-Mexican-drug-cartel genre.
- Paleo Retiree on Dahl’s RED ROCK WEST.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Scott’s still trying to figure out the story flaws in “Blade Runner.”
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That’s always been my feeling too. He’s more concerned with production design, camerawork, and mood, right?
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Yeah. Terrific art director/cinematographer, somewhat lousy director. IMO, anyway.
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That monologue is hilarious, BTW. How does anyone take that seriously?
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I guess it has its own sort of incantatory rhythm, the feeling that it’s getting a deeper, ancient truth, seeing behind the façade of civilization? I dunno, got me.
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“How does anyone take that seriously?” – nobody does, outside of film school types and semiotics professors.
In other words: wankers
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Funny stuff. Sounds like McCarthy hasn’t quite wrapped his mind around the fact that poetic-prose-on-the-page and dramatic writing are two different things.
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I saw it on opening day, with a smattering of fellow retirees and what had to be fellow McCarthy fans. I’d give it 3 of 5 stars mainly for the glitzification of a grungy border town and then only for McCarthy fans — I don’t know many people who would enjoy it if they’re not already clued in to McCarthy.
I think they did an awesome job of making me take Cameron Diaz seriously as a smoking hot grown-up black widow. It was a struggle, and then there’d be a close-up of her face.
Bardem was good, and did not make me think of Anton Chigurh running a nightclub in El Paso.
Brad Pitt — how many times has he played this role??? Seems like a hundred. Yet I thought he did a good believable job as the middleman with a clue, good advice, and a backdoor.
Penelope Cruz and the guy who was the Counselor, looked and acted a little wooden. Is that the correct film-buff term? Disengaged, unclear on the concept, puzzled, whatever.
It really should have been a book, as it’s an obvious follow-on to NCFOM. I’ll DVR it when it comes to cable (or pirate it) and watch it again, simply to enjoy the dialogue that the rest of the world hates so passionately. Stupid words…why so many of them? But also to see how Diaz became / becomes the prime mover of all these pieces.
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Yeah, I agree that people who already groove on McCarthy’s gestalt are more likely to enjoy the film. You’re right that Pitt has played this character many times before, but his confident machismo is so effortless that it’s fun to watch — just look at how easily he pulls off that suit and hat! I think the problem with Fassbender and Cruz, if you’ll forgive me, is that the script doesn’t give them anything to do. They just have to look pretty and be victims.
I think NCFOM is a good movie, but I can’t see what this one adds. Glad you and your friends enjoyed it, though!
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Fondly recalling that pic Diaz did with Tom Cruise where she shrieks at him something like “But I swallowed your cum!” I do love her sense of naughtiness and fun. Oh, and that wonderful scene in “On Any Given Sunday” when she goes into the players’ lockerroom …
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Finally caught up with this and liked it quite a bit. Thought it was like a cross between a George V. Higgins novel and one of those Arty Euro Thrillers from the 70s that aren’t supposed to make sense On Purpose to Make a Point (which I have a real fondness for, but that may be an acquired taste).
I liked Savages as well: both these movies, along with David Ayer’s End of Watch seem to be making a kind of paleo case about the Mexicanization of crime (and law enforcement) in America.
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>>Thought it was like a cross between a George V. Higgins novel and one of those Arty Euro Thrillers from the 70s that aren’t supposed to make sense On Purpose to Make a Point (which I have a real fondness for, but that may be an acquired taste).
Yeah, fair enough, I guess I just don’t have a taste for this kind of thing, although I loved “The Friends of Eddie Coyle.” (I should say I loved the novel, I haven’t seen the movie.)
>>I liked Savages as well: both these movies, along with David Ayer’s End of Watch seem to be making a kind of paleo case about the Mexicanization of crime (and law enforcement) in America.
Good point. Somewhere a film student is writing his thesis on these movies.
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I watched this on the plane yesterday. Your review summed it up perfectly, except for Cameron Diaz, who I thought was as terrible as ever. Cormac McCarthy to me is a pretentious ass who has on occasion shown an ability to write an utterly compelling tale (The Road and NCFOM), though even those novels had some ludicrous speechifying. The mother’s farewell monologue in ‘The Road’ was the most idiotic thing I’ve ever read. Yo Cormac, HUMAN BEINGS DO NOT FUCKING TALK LIKE THAT. I found ‘Blood Meridian’ to be unreadable. He baffles me honestly. Maybe we should call this “David Mamet Syndrome” – great talent often ruined by excessive literary masturbation.
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And here’s the stupid monologue from The Road:
“They say that women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. But I don’t dream at all. You say you can’t? Then don’t do it. That’s all. Because I am done with my own whorish heart and I have been for a long time. You talk about taking a stand but there is no stand to take. My heart was ripped out of me the night he was born so don’t ask for sorrow now. There is none. Maybe you’ll be good at this. I doubt it, but who knows. The one thing I can tell you is that you won’t survive for yourself. I know because I would have never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and sheild it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.”
For fuck’s sake, did nobody tell this guy how ridiculous this passage is?
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