The Counselor
In Movie Theaters: Friday, October 25, 2013
Director: Ridley Scott (In Talks)
Cast:
Brad Pitt
Javier Bardem
Michael Fassbender-Lawyer
Penelope Cruz -Lawyer's Lover
John Leguizamo
Cameron Diaz
"The Counselor" is a movie with sex on the brain, but nowhere else.
It opens with Michael Fassbender and Penelope Cruz in bed together after what is supposed to be a marathon lovemaking session, but director Ridley Scott films the first part of this scene so that they are totally covered by white sheets, as if they were mummies. The sepulchral feeling this image evokes only increases when he goes under those covers and we see them reciting Cormac McCarthy's gaudy, stiff, pretentious dialogue. Thus what might seem like a surefire thing, a love scene between two of the most charismatic and attractive actors in movies today, turns into something odd, distant and vaguely embarrassing.
This is a movie that does not seem overly interested in its own plot, which involves a drug deal gone bad. What it is interested in, unfortunately, is lots of inert scenes in which McCarthy allows his characters to pontificate at length about Big Issues like death, love, money, despair, family and many other things. McCarthy is one of our most acclaimed American novelists, and though he has written some original screenplays over the years, "The Counselor" is the first one to get produced. What works for him in a novel cannot be said to work for him here.
The dialogue in "The Counselor" might kindly be termed "heightened," or it might unkindly be termed the most self-consciously significant gabbing since the days of Paddy Chayefsky. Javier Bardem, who plays a flamboyantly dressed drug king, is stuck with several lengthy monologues about the mysteries of women that should have been severely cut or dropped entirely. As his self-styled intellectual mistress, Cameron Diaz pouts and struts around looking sultry, sometimes smiling to show off a gold tooth. When she talks about her bloodlust and Bardem tells her that she sounds cold, Diaz replies, "Truth has no temperature."
In Movie Theaters: Friday, October 25, 2013
Director: Ridley Scott (In Talks)
Cast:
Brad Pitt
Javier Bardem
Michael Fassbender-Lawyer
Penelope Cruz -Lawyer's Lover
John Leguizamo
Cameron Diaz
"The Counselor" is a movie with sex on the brain, but nowhere else.
It opens with Michael Fassbender and Penelope Cruz in bed together after what is supposed to be a marathon lovemaking session, but director Ridley Scott films the first part of this scene so that they are totally covered by white sheets, as if they were mummies. The sepulchral feeling this image evokes only increases when he goes under those covers and we see them reciting Cormac McCarthy's gaudy, stiff, pretentious dialogue. Thus what might seem like a surefire thing, a love scene between two of the most charismatic and attractive actors in movies today, turns into something odd, distant and vaguely embarrassing.
This is a movie that does not seem overly interested in its own plot, which involves a drug deal gone bad. What it is interested in, unfortunately, is lots of inert scenes in which McCarthy allows his characters to pontificate at length about Big Issues like death, love, money, despair, family and many other things. McCarthy is one of our most acclaimed American novelists, and though he has written some original screenplays over the years, "The Counselor" is the first one to get produced. What works for him in a novel cannot be said to work for him here.
The dialogue in "The Counselor" might kindly be termed "heightened," or it might unkindly be termed the most self-consciously significant gabbing since the days of Paddy Chayefsky. Javier Bardem, who plays a flamboyantly dressed drug king, is stuck with several lengthy monologues about the mysteries of women that should have been severely cut or dropped entirely. As his self-styled intellectual mistress, Cameron Diaz pouts and struts around looking sultry, sometimes smiling to show off a gold tooth. When she talks about her bloodlust and Bardem tells her that she sounds cold, Diaz replies, "Truth has no temperature."
