The Counsellor:

Why a sure thing on paper was a dud on film.

Sometimes films just don't work. I'm sure this gives studio executives nightmares, after millions of dollars are invested in transforming paper into moving pictures. I'm also sure that at heart, studio execs, producers et al, aren't bothered about creating art or reflecting reality through the prism of the director's vision; they're bothered about turning a profit. Major movies are made by major companies, whose purpose is always to make a return on investments. The Counsellor (2013) must have seemed like a sure thing.

Executives must have been rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a film made by the reliable Ridley Scott (I'm being generous here; he hasn't exactly been on great form since 2003's Matchstick Men but remains a big bankable name) and starring some of the biggest names in the world including Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Michael Fassbender. The source material, a debut original screenplay by talented novelist Cormac McCarthy whose work has been adapted as recent successes in The Road (John Hillcoat, 2009) and particularly No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007). Even in terms of subject matter (a man who should know better, out of his depth in a drug deal set on the US-Mexico border) hit the Zeitgeist, echoing the hugely popular tv series Breaking Bad.

So how, given all that talent and cultural currency, did he film turn out to be such a dud? It's a slow paced, confused and confusing film that suffers from a dire lack of cohesion. Parts are painfully slow, parts are hard to follow and in terms of classical narrative cinema, characters are hard to like and motivation for their actions is fuzzy at best, and if you're looking for happy endings or resolution, well, you'd be better off with Spielberg.

One could argue that this is just a bad marriage of parts: a director who is off form adapting a script by somebody more used to working in the more expansive medium of literature. McCarthy's books tend not to follow a very concrete structure; his famed novel Blood Meridian in particular simply meanders from event to event with no meaning or purpose made clear at any point. It's brilliant, but not the sort of thing which would translate well to cohesive cinema.

Even given the likes of Fassbender, Pitt and Javier Bardem, the film struggles to find a 'hero', a protagonist even. Fassbender's eponymous (and nameless) Counsellor fails to convince us of why he does anything that he does. First introduced to us while giving head to the always-brilliant Penelope Cruz, he is clearly a man head over heels in love but soon in-over-his-head when, apparently to supplement his income to cement his relationship with Cruz's Laura character. Two problems emerge from this set up: firstly, the Counsellor is already a criminal defence lawyer and therefore surely not short of cash; and secondly, the film never establishes that his relationship with Laura is strained enough to necessitate resorting to a drug deal to provide an injection of happy capital. She is painted neither as a gold digger nor as unhappy; in fact, she appears almost repelled by Camron Diaz' predatory Malkina and her lavish lifestyle. The only remaining motivation for the Counsellor's actions is therefore a selfish one: he likes the high life and is willing to do something terrible to sustain it. Problems exist here as well: neither Fassbender nor Scott ever really sell his desperation, his greed. And if greed is his motivation, and therefore the root cause of the terrible events that ensue, then this film becomes a morality play, albeit one where the most immoral character ends up victorious.

It is worth considering that casting is a problem with The Counsellor; it's possible that this is an ensemble that is just too, well, good. Fassbender, still riding a deserved wave of success, is just too damn likeable. He manages to find humanity in even the nastiest shits that he plays: Magneto feels like a rounded character in his hands; his Edwin Epps in 12 Years A Slave was remarkable: at no point was he a pantomime villain or anything less than human. Here, we simply don't buy that his character needs or even wants to do his first drug deal with a dangerous cartel. Whereas Breaking Bad's Walter White was driven by desperation and family, the Counsellor seems to be driven by a fondness for Bentleys, making sympathy difficult for an audience. Likewise, Cruz is never anything less than in love with him and loyal. That we like her makes the ending all the more horrifying and tragic, however it makes it hard for an audience to buy that the relationship would be threatened if he didn't become a drug smuggler.

Brad Pitt's Westray is less of a person, more a portmanteau of every seen-it-all-before, too-cool-for-this-shit character he's played since Ocean's 11. His frankly horrible death is surprising for two reasons: one, that he initially seems too inconsequential to have a whole sub-plot of his own, let alone hijack the main plot when Fassbender hits a dead end, and two, that Brad Pitt rarely dies on screen.  Much more successful are the gaudy, life-on-the-edge Javier Bardem, whose death is inevitable very early on, and the serpentine, Machiavellian Diaz, whose ultimate survival and victory leaves a cold, hollow feeling at the end.

The ending leaves something of an unpleasant bitter taste: following the violent unravelling of The Counsellor's plans, his failed attempt to negotiate with the (actually very reasonable-sounding) cartel boss Jefe (Ruben Blades, the coolest name I have ever encountered), the fate of Cruz's Laura is hinted at. In a neat plot device (which is unfortunately played twice, lessening the effect), Westray explains cartel methods of murder and revenge to The Counsellor; both of which then happen later in the film. We are led to think that this wholly likeable character is raped and beheaded (possibly not in that order) and the DVD highlights are posted to our hero in his grotty hotel room. He is a beaten man. Other than the stupidity of getting involved in drug trafficking to begin with, none of what transpires is really his fault; the series of betrayals and wrongdoings effectively punish The Counsellor for the actions of others, with no lesson offered other than “live with the choices you've made.” The final scene of Malkina discussing how she plans to invest her ill-gotten gains, apparently now free from cartel retribution, does not provide a satisfactory ending. Evil triumphs, good ends up headless in a landfill.

One could of course argue that it is admirable for filmmakers to take these risks, subvert expectations. We come in with a latent expectation of a happy ending and we don't get one. Surely its admirable that McCarthy and Scott set out to surprise and even disappoint our expectations? Well, yes it can be but much depends upon the execution. He film is muddled and hard to like. Scott shoots with a coldness and often makes the film hard to follow. The characters give us little to cling to either: the protagonist a debut drug dealer with fuzzy motivation and the antagonists are unknowable assassins, anonymous cartel cronies, the forces of fate, and Cameron Diaz.

My opinion is that Cormac Mccarthy's sparse, brutal prose simply didn't translate to film this time out, as a major mainstream movie. The Coens succeeded in making his work a black comedy, John Hillcoat, a gruelling post apocalypse road movie. Here, a straight glamorous thriller didn't work because our expectations as an audience were not addressed. We need to know why things are happening, we need cause, effect and motivation. We need to see evil punished or at least acknowledged, and we need somebody we can get behind and root for. We get none of this. In Blood Meridian, the loose structure and lack of causality for many of the events succeeds: the world is violent and violence is something that is not caused; it just is. In his screenplay for The Counsellor, violence is often a punishment for something that a character didn't even do and when working with a talented and well-liked ensemble, a mainstream cinema audience just isn't going to buy that. It's just a shame that what should have been a huge and very satisfying whole ended up being so much less than the sum of its parts.