Review of The Counselor (2013) by Fairbrother — 14 May 2017

If you're going to see The Counselor, make sure you see the "unrated extended edition" and not the theatrical cut. The theatrical cut really is as bad as you've heard; however the extended version, available on blu-ray, might be a flawed masterpiece. It's this version I'm considering here.

It runs 20-odd minutes longer but, paradoxically, feels shorter. Where writer Cormac McCarthy's flowery ruminations on fate and morality felt unbearably pretentious when squeezed into the "tighter" running-time, they actually take on a distinct life of their own when given the proper room to breathe and resonate as intended. This film is still more talk than action, but in this longer version the more relaxed pacing makes it clear that we're not watching a crime thriller bogged down in "arty" pomposity, but rather a black-hearted fable about privilege and moral relativism, a poem of existential horror in chic gangster-movie dress. Strict realism does not apply and conventional pulpy thrills are not the end goal. This one's meant to gently ensnare, then snap shut, and linger afterward like a nightmare.

Where the theatrical cut felt compromised by the tension between McCarthy's despairing fatalism and director Ridley Scott's slick aestheticism, the extended edition feels like a much more organic meeting of sensibilities. Their unlikely common ground is perhaps best expressed in a tiny restored subplot, a surreal last-act digression about the fate of two pet cheetahs who, abandoned by their owners, roam suburban Texas.

The film's most notorious scene - Cameron Diaz's femme fatale grinding herself to climax against the windshield of a sports car - still feels tasteless. But now, with the context made clearer, the absurdity of the act and, more importantly, the male narrator's impotent bewilderment in the face of it, shift the focus. Where I felt embarrassed for Diaz in the theatrical cut, she owns that scene in the extended version. It's no longer a scene about how "perverted" she is; it's a scene about how terrified these supposedly empowered men are of women. The constant sex-talk, which once felt like misogyny run amok, now underlines a subtle point: when men categorize women as either Madonna or Whore, they unwittingly categorize themselves to the corresponding, subservient role/s of "worshiper" or "customer". It's an irony that eludes these boys (until, of course, it's too late).

There are still some scenes that feel unnecessary. Some of the performances - Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in particular - feel committed but slightly misdirected. And the denial of conventional narrative platitudes, or "likable" characters, may frustrate even some open-minded viewers. It maybe a misfire but, by God, it's a fascinating one: cold, dark, pitiless and quite unlike anything else.