This will go down as one of the all-time biggest bait-and-switches in movie history. You’ve got an excellent cast (Brad Pitt in ambiguous mode, Penelope Cruz as the sexy fiancee, Javier Bardem in colorful mode, Michael Fassbender as the compromised hero, and Cameron Diaz as the villain), a prestige director, and the first original screenplay of legendary novelist Cormac McCarthy that revolves around a criminal lawyer who works the Texas/Mexico border trying to put together a huge drug deal. Plus, that badass trailer. I mean, I would have put money down that this movie would be good…until I actually saw it.
What Works: It takes a while to figure out exactly how bad The Counselor is, and the choice direction, cinematography, and production values certainly help disguise it. Also, even if the performances are buried in a layer of crap, who doesn’t enjoy seeing Pitt in a white suit/cowboy hat, Bardem prancing around as a drug lord in a gay magician’s wardrobe, or Diaz in a villainous role with cheetah spot tattoos?
What Doesn’t Work: It really boils down to a staggeringly bad script. The “tension” never escalates or grabs us which is a real problem for a crime thriller. The action sequences are staged for maximum nonchalance. And the dialogue is so pretentious and cryptic it’s difficult to understand what the characters are talking about at any given moment. [Does Cormac McCarthy even know how real people talk to each other?]
In the end, it keeps committing one of the primary sins of movies/TV shows written by novelists or based on books (like Game of Thrones): tell us, don’t show us. Characters start telling stories when they should be doing stuff, and the action takes a breather every few minutes for a man to tell another man about the moral nature of man. There’s one scene everybody’s talking about (in a bad way) where Diaz pleasures herself against the windshield of a ferrari, but it strikes you how poorly this is staged since it’s all a story Bardem is telling to Fassbender rather than something playing out live to fully engage the audiencea.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Easier to follow (and less arbitrary) plot, less cryptic dialogue, a little bit more action, and when the noose tightens, really let the dread escalate. Plus, I feel Diaz’s villainess is mostly wasted when she could have been a truly iconic character. [It’s also a mistake to not let her and the “hero” Counselor share more than 30 seconds of screen time or even directly confront each other…kind of deflates the cat and mouse game between protagonist/antagonist.]