A project I have in moments of idleness intermittently entertained goes by the working title of Strange Bedfellows, and would consist of a study of films co-authored by disparate talents, which nevertheless or et pour cause turn out magnificently. This first occurred to me after seeing Shockproof (1949) some years ago: a film directed by Douglas Sirk and written by Samuel Fuller? As they say in NYC, who'd have thunk it? The Anderson/Pynchon or Spielberg/Coen duets recently reviewed in these pages might also qualify. So does the Scott/McCarthy combo in The Counselor.
The Counselor was the 21st feature film directed by Ridley Scott, whose The Martian (2015) was reviewed here recently, and his first collaboration with Cormac McCarthy, the greatest living American writer.
It tells the story of a lawyer (the peripatetic Michael Fassbender, the eponymous but unnamed counselor) who has everything (money, looks, cars, clothes, Penelope Cruz for fiancée)but wants more, so decides to try his hand at drug dealing for a one-time 20 MUSD extra; deal goes bad, due to perfidious scheme masterminded by überShe Devil Malkina (Cameron Diaz, exceeding herself as the very incarnation of feline-reptiline evil), and so the counselor discovers the cruel difficulties of talking reason to the Mexican drug mafia when they find themselves 20 mil short.
I saw The Counselor when it was first released and had since then wanted to see it again. I did it yesterday. I liked it even more. The plot unfolds in a series of dialogue scenes between the counselor and assorted operatives and Mafiosi. The counselor doesn’t counsel anybody, receives much counsel instead, to no avail for since the dice were thrown and the dejecta hit the fan there's nothing left to do but face the music. Cormac McCarthy's dialogue makes Dashiell Hammet's sound like Jane Austen (most famous sample by now being Malkina's remark to the effect that “the truth has no temperature”) as the characters egress puppet-like, unaware of or unwilling to face impending doom, numbed by a constant display of affluent uselessness ranging from standard chic (the counselor) to very (Brad Pitt's 70s Country Westray) or outrageously (Antonio Bardem's spike haired, purple sunglassed, embroidered shirted Reiner) tackiness. Correspondingly, Scott recruited the most superfluously luxurious cast (all of the above, plus Bruno Ganz, Ruben Bladés and Rosie Perez, plus lots more pretty people) since How the West Was Won and silently answers the frequent criticism that he's a decorative director (at one time not entirely unjustly accused of only being able to film smoke being shot through fans with reverse lighting…) by sustaining dramatic tension in a way that mirrors better than any other film in memory the feeling one gets in those dreams where you need to get to or escape from somewhere and everything you try to do to go forward takes you one step backward.
The Counselor is unjustly underrated. It will probably never be one of Ridley Scott's most famous films, but it is certainly one of the best.