Review: "The Counselor"

Cormac McCarthy is a glorious novelist, and many of his books have been turned into exceptional films -- "The Road," "No Country for Old Men." But his first attempt, at age 80, at an original screenplay falls flat on its Gucci boot heels.

This story of drug intrigue along the U.S./Mexico intrigue is a murky mess, all character but little plot. The movie at one point actually loses track of its main character, an amoral (and never-named) attorney played by Michael Fassbender. In the final act, McCarthy and director Ridley Scott start introducing a bunch of new characters played be recognizable actors, who say a few lines and disappear with little consequence to their appearance.

It's almost as if there was a raffle entered by a bunch of thespians who wanted to say they were in a Cormac McCarthy film.

A strange undercurrent of sexual energy runs through the movie, with many encounters between characters having the feel of a power-trip seduction. There's very little actual sex, though, and one comes away believing these people like to talk about sex more than actually engage in it.

Penelope Cruz plays his girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, a sweet and unsullied woman who has no idea her man is in deep with the Mexican drug cartel. He provides her the high life of magnificent houses, cars and meals, and she's innocent enough to accept that he earns his pile defending low-rent criminals (like Rosie Perez, who has a strong, single scene).

The counselor has an association with Reiner (Javier Bardem), a flashy club owner and drug kingpin, and decides to go in with him on a big narcotics deal. The lawyer thinks this will be a one-off, but Reiner knows better. The two men like each other's company, so going into business seems like the next step.

Hanging around the edges is Malkina, Reiner's cruel cat of a girlfriend, played by Cameron Diaz in a performance shockingly devoid of any nuance. Malkina is a predator in every way -- for money, sex and attention. As if the filmmakers hadn't made this point clearly enough, they gift her with a cheetah pattern tattoo all over her body, and a pair of the actual animals as pets/guardians.

My biggest problem with this movie is that all the characters speak as though their dialogue was written for them. Everything sounds very arch and constructed, as if we're supposed to revel in the resplendence of McCarthy's prose instead of believing these words would actually fall out of somebody's mouth. It's the sort of thing that works on the page but not on the screen.

Example: "Isn't that a little cold?" "The truth has no temperature."

Considering the story revolves around drug trafficking, the actual mechanics of the plot are left rather unclear. We never actually see or hear from the cartel people, though shadowy go-betweens turn up and depart without much rhyme or reason. The truck hauling the drugs -- we're never even told what kind it is, other than it's a lot -- has all sorts of adventures on the road, changing hands several times. The counselor and Reiner get blamed for the loss, even though they were just victims, and spend the rest of the movie on the run.

Brad Pitt appears a few times as Westray, a slithery associate of the counselor who also has some skin in the game and delivers apocryphal warnings about what's to come.

This is the sort of movie in which early on, we are told about a particularly nasty way for someone to die. And we know we're just marking time until one of the people we're watching meets that grisly fate.

This is the sort of movie that is bewitching to actors, since they get to speak a lot of pretty dialogue and wear cool clothes and engage in conversations where everyone's trying to pretend how smart they are. But for audiences it's a listless wander through the desert, where the scenery is pretty but the map was lost long ago.

Video review: "The Road"

A Man. A Boy. We know they are father and son, because they call each other so, but we never learn their names. They're bedraggled and filthy, their cheeks caved in with dire hunger, as they push their meager possessions in a rusty shopping cart down an ash-strewn road, with the threat or horrendous death around every turn.

That's the bleak yet uplifting world of "The Road," one of 2009's best films -- which almost no one saw because it barely got released in theaters.

It's out on video now, and I urge people to give this spare, understated near-masterpiece a chance.

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smith-McPhee star as the pair struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Taking a cue from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, director John Hillcoat ("The Proposition") underplays the performances and the dialogue. Screenwriter Joe Penhall lets the emotional drama assert itself without superfluous embellishment.

We're not even sure what turned the world into such a forbidding expanse of death and decay. Nuclear war seems likely. It's not even clear where the man and boy are heading, other than trying to escape winter's grasp and endure another day.

They meet other humans, but most of the time it's not a welcome occasion. With nothing able to grow, much of mankind has resorted to cannibalism for food. It's a zero-sum game whose only conclusion is humanity's extinction.

But among all this crushing bleakness, there is joy and tenderness that is exhilarating.

Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron have brief but powerful roles as, respectively, an ancient man they meet along the road and the wife and mother who deserted them, giving up all hope and abandoning them to her despair.

Extras are the same for both Blu-ray and DVD versions.

There is a making-of documentary and several deleted scenes, as well as a feature-length commentary track by Hillcoat.

I'm actually rather perturbed at how "The Road" was received. Its release was delayed for about a year, perhaps because in the then-new economic devastation, the studio rationalized that audiences wouldn't greet such a downbeat film with much enthusiasm.

Prove them wrong.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "The Road"

What a mystery: How can a movie so spare and bleak be so emotionally rich?

Watching the blasted, gray skies and ash-covered landscape of "The Road," you wonder how this film could be anything but a fatal downer. And yet the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer-winning novel about a father and son navigating a post-apocalyptic wasteland is as joyous a cinematic experience I've had this year.

Director John Hillcoat, who helmed the hard-bitten Western "The Proposition" in 2005, masterfully translates McCarthy's austere prose into an understated epic of survival and human perseverance.

In detailing the quotidian journey of a Man and Boy, who are never even given names, McCarthy often eschewed even punctuation and capitalization. Hillcoat smartly mirrors this style by having his actors underplay, and letting the screenplay by Joe Penhall find its own emotional beats without garnishing them with unnecessary flourishes.

The plot, such as it is, is minimalist. Father and young son are traveling south through the desolation to escape the icy hand of coming winter. They do not have any specific destination or purpose in mind, other than continuing to live.

As in McCarthy's book, it is left unsaid what exactly turned the earth to a cinder -- although nuclear war seems probable. The results are starkly inescapable: There is no sunshine. There are no animals. Tinder-dry trees fall and the earth heaves. Nothing will grow. The only food to be had is the detritus of an orphaned mankind.

There is a way of surviving: Cannibalism. But the father refuses to even consider this, because they're the "good guys." The boy (Kodi Smith-McPhee) and his father repeat this phrase like a mantra, or a hymn.

For a good guy, the father must undertake some pretty horrific tasks. He carries a revolver with two bullets left, which he's saving in case they're caught by the roving gangs of murderers who view them as food. The scene where he shows his son how to use the gun to kill himself -- "Make sure you point up" -- is chilling.

Viggo Mortensen expertly plays the father, a man who forces himself to give up hope and the memory of his spouse in order to concentrate on keeping the boy alive. His wife (played in flashbacks by Charlie Theron) gave up her own life, literally walking away from them, because she couldn't stand the thought of life in the aftermath.

There's a spiritual element to the tale, as in the father's admonishment to his son to "keep the fire alive," pointing at his heart. In the man's sporadic narration, it's made even more plain.

"All I know is the child is my warrant. If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke," the father says.

Their journey is episodic and compelling. At one point they lose all their meager possessions and have nothing to eat, but then stumble upon a treasure trove of wealth. They come across an ancient man (Robert Duvall) along the road who is nearly blind but sees much. They are hunted, and pursue their own quarry. Anger is unleashed; blood is shed.

And yet it's in the small moments that the film finds an aching tenderness, like when the father pulls a warm blanket off a shriveled corpse and lovingly wraps it around his shivering son. It's the understatement of "The Road" that speaks loudly.

3.5 stars