The Counsellor

What follows are my thoughts as I watched the rather terrible film: The Counsellor.

So many stars, and it’s still really shit

SPOILERS ABOUND!

So, this is on my TV as we speak and I just had to getting writing because I’m not actually sure if I’ll be able to sit through the whole thing.  The opening scene is almost enough to make me switch off!  It starts with Michael Fassbender under the covers with Penelope Cruz, OK fine.  But when he heads south, and utters the words “Oh my god, you’re sopping”  I really want to turn it off.  I mean, who actually talks like that?  Cringe!

The next ridiculous thing is a shot of Cameron Diaz on horseback, riding alongside a cheetah, for some reason.   This is only just barely after the opening credits, so I quickly get a sense of what we’re dealing with here.

Now Fassbender is in Amsterdam looking at diamonds which is only worth mentioning because it goes on a bit and is almost totally incomprehensible (I’ve got the subtitles on now) – eventually we learn the upshot is that he wants a diamond for an engagement ring for Penny.

Now Cam is teasing Penny about her sex life, for some reason, even though I’m not sure why they’re even hanging out because they don’t seem to be friends.  Cameron has cheetah spots tattooed on her back.  Is this significant?  I’m not sure, but I somehow doubt it.

As for the plot, it seems to be about a lawyer who decides to get involved with drug trafficking via one of his dodgy clients, played by an bizarrely be-coiffed Javier Bardem.  Brad Pitt is there too, but I’m not sure why or who the character is.  Nor am I sure why he’s wearing a cowboy hat, which seems a tad incongruous in this setting.

Oh, and did I mention that Cam shags a car?  No?  Well, she does.

Anyway, some drugs get stolen and they think Fassbender did it so he’s in deep shit but at this point I couldn’t really care, and if I’m honest, I’m pretty confused.  And there are still 40 minutes left [sigh]…

Bardem gets shot dead.  Oh, ok, he had pet cheetahs, so maybe that explains Cam’s seemingly unnecessary tats.

And then Fassbender is on the phone to a Mexican guy who makes a really long speech which goes something like this but is longer:

I would urge you to see the truth of the situation you are in, counsellor.  That is my advice.  It is not for me to tell you what you should have done of not done.  The world in which you seek to undo the mistakes that you made is different from the world where the mistakes were made.  You are now at the crossing.  And you want to choose, but there is no choosing there.  There’s only accepting.  The choosing was done a long time ago.

And he goes on and on and blah blah blah and then, then he signs off by saying “If I have time, I think I’ll take a small nap”.  Err, thanks for that?

And when they speak Spanish there are no subtitles which is annoying, because I haven’t taken a Spanish class in 17 years so I’m pretty rusty, and I think there’s not much chance that these people are asking the way to the beach or the library.

Oh, and there goes Brad Pitt, killed by an automated noose-gadget that Bardem helpfully told us about earlier in the film.  And there goes Penny.  They really are dispatching the cast at an alarming rate.I kind of think it’s a shame it took them this long to get the killing off the main characters.

And that folks, is apparently, that.  Another curiously wordy monologue, this time from Diaz, and fade to black.

With a plot that’s thinner than a sheet of rice paper, characters with all the depth of a children’s paddling pool and some of the most atrociously cringe making dialogue I’ve heard this side of the millennium, I have to say that this film is pretty terrible.  Thanks a fucking bunch!  What an utter waste of time – 117 minutes really is too long for such a crappy film.

I remember when this came, out thinking it looked good, but it was pretty much universally panned so I didn’t bother.  This is a lesson for me – update your LoveFilm list!

Score: 4/10 because Michael Fassbender’s in it and for its trashiness.