Film Review<\/em>
\n\u201cThe Counselor\u201d: A tale of mostly evil<\/strong>
\n<\/a>\u201cThe Counselor,\u201d Ridley Scott\u2019s terrifying, implacable new movie, opens on a seductive scene. The setting is a softly lighted bedroom in which two people are murmuring under a white sheet. You don\u2019t see who they are until there\u2019s a cut to under the sheet, bringing you close enough to Michael Fassbender and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz to feel like an interloper.
\nThe two are wrapped in a radiant intimacy, as if they were adrift in \u201cthe world of light\u201d of Mount Olympus described by Homer in \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d that place where \u201cgods live their days of pleasure.\u201d
\nGods fall though, few as mercilessly or memorably as those in \u201cThe Counselor,\u201d a tale of good and evil, but because it was written by Cormac McCarthy, mostly evil. Fassbender plays the title character: a corrupt, unnamed, high-flying Texas lawyer. He moves fast, as does this film, which soon jumps from Olympus to a garage in Mexico, where men and dogs slip through shadows, jumps north of the border where another woman rides a horse, flanked by a cheetah chasing a jackrabbit. The hare escapes in a swirl of dust, but by the end of this scene, Scott has seized your attention with a primitive, predatory vision, one red in tooth and claw.
\nThe cheetah is tame; the woman, Malkina (Cameron Diaz), profoundly less so. Both live with Reiner (an excellent Javier Bardem) and a second cheetah in a lavish desert compound, a kind of a Donatella Versace delirium, with bulbous bodybuilders manning the gates and sleek rides purring in the drive.
\nA nightclub owner, Reiner has a dangerous sideline doing business with a drug cartel with which he has negotiated a deal involving the Counselor. It hinges on a huge narcotics shipment that\u2019s under way when the movie opens, putting you in the midst of an operation you have to catch up to even as the Counselor hurtles forward, hopscotching from place to place as other characters enter and exit.
\nFrom all the ellipses, as well as the eccentric, mesmerizing poetry of his dialogue, McCarthy appears to have never read a screenwriting manual in his life (and that is meant as a compliment!). Although there\u2019s a fairly blunt, near-archetypal aspect to the main characters \u2014 their expensive homes, sports cars and designer clothes speak the language of money fluently \u2014 the plot remains deliberately unobvious for a long time. In between, the Counselor has long conversations \u2014 filled with jokes, archaic words, odd cadences and frightening anecdotes \u2014 with both Reiner and another man, Westray (Brad Pitt), a philosophical cowboy in a white Stetson and tailored Western suit.
\nThe story may be initially elusive, but there\u2019s a clarity, solidity and stillness to his images that augment the narrative\u2019s gravity and inexorable momentum.
\nLike the Counselor\u2019s lover, Laura (Penelope Cruz), the natural world is a reminder of another reality beyond the brutal one the cartel, Westray and the others have made. And it\u2019s these reminders that anchor you, if only during the progressively unnerving hour when you don\u2019t know what is happening but do know \u2014 from the menacing talk to the grim-reaper smiles \u2014 that it will turn out badly.
\nNothing is spoken in \u201cThe Counselor\u201d even as everything is said. Westray and Reiner share bloody tales that only make ghastly sense later. This is no country for anyone. Every so often, someone says something that puts the stakes and intensifying throb of fear into unambiguous perspective.
\nThe Counselor scarcely blinks and may smile. \u201cMy back,\u201d he later says while driving his Bentley, \u201cis up against the wall.\u201d Fassbender, softening his face and speaking with the measured calm of a reasonable, thinking man, makes the Counselor seem too rational for this madness.
\nIt\u2019s no surprise when the violence \u2014 methodical, almost surgical and thrill-free \u2014 does come; the surprise is how long it takes to arrive. This delay of the inevitable worst helps amplify the dread, your trepidation stoked by Reiner and Westray\u2019s stories, Malkina\u2019s dead-eyed stare, the prowling cheetahs and the rumbling truck.
\nThe movie\u2019s title may make cruel sense \u2014 the Counselor is a man who himself takes no counsel \u2014 but a truer encapsulation of its worldview is \u201cNo Exit.\u201d<\/p>\n

-With New Age<\/strong> input<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film Review \u201cThe Counselor\u201d: A tale of mostly evil \u201cThe Counselor,\u201d Ridley Scott\u2019s terrifying, implacable new movie, opens on a seductive scene. The setting is a softly lighted bedroom in which two people are murmuring under a white sheet. You don\u2019t see who they are until there\u2019s a cut to under the sheet, bringing you … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n