Hatchet reporter Matt Maresca shares his latest cinematic experience.

 “The Counselor” 2013

★★★✰✰

Though it features a cast, writer, and director that probably have plenty of awards between them, “The Counselor” misses the masterpiece mark and lands somewhere around flawed Oscar bait.

The film tells the story of a corrupt lawyer known only as “the counselor”  (Fassbender) who gets in over his head when he tries to enter the world of drug trafficking.  Also involved in the deal is a nightclub entrepreneur and drug kingpin named Reiner  (Bardem) and his sinister girlfriend Malkina (Diaz), as well as a middleman Westray (Pitt), who tries to warn the counselor about his actions.  Cruz plays the counselor’s girlfriend Laura, whose decision not to question her boyfriend’s activities could come back to haunt her.

While the talent and screenplay by famed author Cormac McCarthy promises brilliance, the film falls short. The novelist is clearly not used to writing spoken dialogue, forcing the audience to listen to the characters wax poetic paragraphs that feel like they belong in a novel.

Furthermore, the movie’s attempt to play up a “sex is power” theme falls flat on its face.  This is partly Diaz’s fault.  She throws herself at her role as the evil seductress, but usually winds up sounding ridiculous and heavy-handed (a problem that, again, involves the writing).  It doesn’t help that with the exception of two scenes, none of the other major characters really explore the theme whatsoever.  It makes the film’s message disjointed, and hurts the overall film by distracting from the counselor’s engaging “in-too-deep” storyline.

All this said, the movie is watchable and enjoyable.  Ridley Scott’s directing is fantastic, particularly his positively dystopian shots of Ciudad Juárez and a cocaine-laden truck that goes back and forth across the border.  He also uses some scenes’ brutality to great effect, and the main plot is interesting, if plodding in its realist horror.  Pitt, Cruz, and Bardem are all as good as you would expect, and Fassbender is borderline brilliant as the deal spirals out of control for his character.  He may be the greatest cryer in the history of cinema.

In the end, “The Counselor” is by no means great, but is enjoyable because of the individual talent around it. Look for McCarthy to better acclimate himself to screenwriting for a possible round two with Ridley Scott and Fassbender down the line.

Release date: Oct. 25, 2013

Director: Ridley Scott

Genre: Drama

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, and Brad Pitt