“We announce to the darkness that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives.”

One would think that a film helmed by Ridley Scott, written by Cormac McCarthy, and depicted on screen by a handful of bona fide movie stars would be a surefire thing. Unfortunately, The Counselor is a mixed bag that only gets off the ground once or twice and leaves you feeling somewhat unclean, slightly embarrassed for the cast, and worst of all, disappointed that such a great assembly of talent produced such a mediocre film.

As an author, McCarthy is a colossus; up until his death several years ago, he was considered by many to be the greatest living American writer. Although several of his novels have been adapted to the screen, The Counselor is the first screenplay that he’s written specifically for a film.¹ Whereas the novel format affords the author endless pages to explore the depths of human depravity, revel in wanton savagery, and wax philosophical about greed and sin and sex, in a feature film he must lay out his sprawling thesis in quick and dirty fashion. Paring down his ideas results in a compromised product—a rangy story that alternates between absurd sexual adventures, casually violent death, and cryptic monologues that either veer off into no man’s land or completely telegraph later plot points. Working in the unfamiliar format, without the overwhelming punctuation-less aesthetic and mythological imagery that he conjures with the written word, McCarthy’s characters become caricatures, the most heinous gut-punch moments of his fiction hit are hollowed out, and his bleak vision of mankind becomes lost in a story that plays as a campy homage to his older works. There are a few standalone sequences that hit the mark, but The Counselor does not meet the lofty expectations set by the established names that were involved with the project.

The story follows the Counselor (Michael Fassbender), nameless in the mold of The Kid from Blood Meridian (1985). His moniker is ironic because even as he offers his advisory services as an attorney to inmates and convicts, he finds himself in a dicey situation where following a logical decision tree will not help him. He’s fallen in love with Laura (Penélope Cruz) after a sex marathon and in such a state irrationally goes in on a risky drug deal with his questionable friends Reiner (Javier Bardem) and Westray (Brad Pitt) who both chastise and support his decision to enter the trade. But he deems the financial incentive worth the risk, especially considering that he’s gone and purchased an expensive diamond for his beloved in Amsterdam.

The plan seems foolproof. Sealed barrels of cocaine are loaded into a sewage tanker, which no one in their right mind would search for obvious reasons. The truck will be driven across the border, then briefly stored at a treatment plant before it is unloaded and distributed. The Counselor isn’t even involved except to pony up an initial investment. When the truck is hijacked and the perpetrator linked back to the Counselor through one of his former clients, an enraged cartel begins pursuing him and anyone associated with him. In a panic, the Counselor begins seeking counsel from everyone he knows, but everyone he knows is at risk because of his perceived betrayal. Westray, previously a solid source of guidance and charming one liners, now turns his conversations with the Counselor toward snuff films and the definition of friendship.

Listen, if your definition of a friend is someone who will die for you… then you don’t have any friends.

The brief bursts of realized violence are fantastic, including a splendidly executed shootout and several novel ways for mutilating a human body. In an extended sequence with a tactile grittiness, the Wireman (Sam Spruell) walks into a motorcycle dealership and measures the seat height, then heads out to an arrow-straight back road and ratchets a thin gauge of sharp wire across it, tight as a guitar string, and waits for a young criminal pawn to come speeding into his trap. But these short flashes of intensity are counteracted by McCarthy’s wordy diversions which are hit-or-miss. It doesn’t bother me that no one speaks like McCarthy writes—no one actually wants movie characters to speak like people do in real life anyway—but his verbosity is so extreme that it demands to be held at arm’s length and remain unintegrated. Most of these excursions are pretentious but only some are interesting. While considering the various rocks with the jeweler (Bruno Ganz) in Amsterdam, the Counselor is subjected to a lengthy discussion on the diamond business and Judaism in the modern world. Later, the Counselor finds himself on the phone with a philosophically-minded cartel boss who tries to convince him to accept his fate by telling him, “You are the world you have created. And when you cease to exist, this world that you have created will also cease to exist. But for those with the understanding that they’re living the last days of the world, death acquires a different meaning. The extinction of all reality is a concept no resignation can encompass.”

On two separate occasions, Bardem delivers extended monologues: one about the bolito, an execution device consisting of razor wire and a small motor that, once thrown over the victim’s head, gradually strangles and decapitates them (it makes an appearance toward the end). Another concerns his wild muse Malkina (Cameron Diaz) humping the windshield of his Ferrari which includes a bizarre but memorable allusion to a fish sucking the glass of an aquarium and ends with the playboy admitting that he wasn’t able to enjoy the display because it was “too gynecological.” In any case, it’s Malkina—who sports a gold tooth, silver fingernails, and a leopard print tattoo all over her back, inexplicably slips in and out of a Latina accent, and trains cheetahs to hunt—that is the film’s main villain, manipulating and ripping off the Counselor, Reiner, and Westray for her own gain.

Dense dialogue is not inherently a problem. Plenty of foreign and indie films are dominated by people talking. But McCarthy’s characters largely exist for the sole purpose of delivering his protracted enigmatic musings. This works quite well when presented in written form where feature length is malleable, characters can be given dimensions, and themes can be circled repeatedly. Scott, for his part, seems perfectly in tune with McCarthy’s aims. It’s just that his hands are tied when the screenplay pauses every few minutes for lengthy aside. In the end, the reason that I was excited to see The Counselor is the reason I didn’t like it all that much.

1. That’s not an entirely true statement. He wrote the screenplay for the television film The Gardener’s Son (1977), and Tommy Lee Jones directed The Sunset Limited (2011) based on McCarthy’s play shortly after it was published.