Can Fassbender handle the truth?

The Counsellor

Director: Ridley Scott Writer: Cormac McCarthy Starring: Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, Brad Pitt Runtime: 117 minutes Certification: 18

On paper, The Counsellor should be perfect. Cormac McCarthy’s first original screenplay (a few of his other books have been adapted into screenplays – notably No Country for Old Men and The Road), directed by Ridley Scott, the genius behind Alien and the man with such a passion for McCarthy’s work he’s been trying to work out how to film Blood Meridian for years. Plus a heavy-hitter cast featuring the likes of Michael Fassbender at the point where his career seems utterly unstoppable, Javier Bardem after his scene-stealing turn in Skyfall, Brad Pitt following on from holding up the entire film of World War Z and both Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz, amongst many, many others. What could go wrong? Obviously, the immediate answer to that question is: absolutely everything. Fortunately, that’s not quite the case here, but The Counsellor is an extremely complicated beast. McCarthy’s script is a real treat in terms of the spoken word, delivering some exquisite monologues that just wouldn’t exist in any other film, but it does make the film incredibly heavy on talking heads – there are a few pulse-pounding moments of action, but on the whole it’s a film that requires a lot of investment in the characters for, ultimately, no reward. In traditional McCarthy style, The Counsellor is unrelentingly bleak, offering a flicker of (false) hope at the beginning with a proposal before rapidly spinning off into an uncontrollable descent into hell for the eponymous counsellor. There is no innocence, no hope, no redeemable features left in the world of The Counsellor, and the final cut leaves a film with no closure. It’s horrifying – and on one hand it’s a move that leaves the film feeling unfinished, but on the other, it couldn’t end any other way. This is not a film that was meant to have a happy ending, and to give closure (other than the deaths of various characters) would be to undermine the preceding two hours. With such a dialogue-heavy film, much depends on the actors to deliver the goods and make it all engaging (and believable – how many monologues do you encounter in the real world?). With the names The Counsellor has on board, there was never any doubt they’d manage it. Fassbender is endlessly watchable, Bardem is absurdly sleazy (proving his incredible versatility, from the silent and threatening assassin in No Country to the evil mastermind in Skyfall to this utter sleaze-bag), Diaz is an enigma wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a question (to paraphrase someone more intelligent), Pitt is charming and Cruz does an incredible job with a very limited part. There are flashes of black humour through the endless darkness, and the cast handle it well, rolling off the fantastically verbose dialogue like nobody’s business. Despite the stunning script, the assured acting, and the delightful directing (Scott’s as on-form as he’s ever been – with a script that’s less of a horrifying mess than Prometheus, he has plenty of chances to show off) it’s still hard to conclusively like The Counsellor. It’s a long slog through a two hour run-time, and the resulting feeling of emptiness and shock that it leaves is not the best way to leave a cinema. The very fact it can have that effect speaks volumes.