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Javier Bardem, Javier Bardem’s hair, Javier Bardem’s outfit, and Michael Fassbender in Ridley Scott’s The Counselor

– Aaaaaa! The latest in Javier Bardem’s gallery of bad hairstyles. What’s the ranking for this?
– It knocks his hair in Skyfall out of third place. His No Country For Old Men moptop is still second, and the indescribable coiffure in Love in the Time of Cholera first.
– Hmm. I think Fassbender should always play cold characters.
– I can’t think of any warm characters he’s played.
– Cameron Diaz is beginning to look like Ellen Barkin, only Ellen doesn’t have to try so hard to be freaky and scary.
– This is weird. The characters talk too much.
– Worse, they’re speechifying. In quaint, ponderous English. Who wrote this?
– Cormac McCarthy.
– What!! Well, it could be a not-bad radio play. From 1920.
– It sounds like they’re reading a mediocre Cormac McCarthy novel out loud.
– I suspect they treated his screenplay like a sacred text. Couldn’t bring themselves to cut the blather.
– And no Coen Brothers (No Country For Old Men) to whip it into shape for cinema.
– Are we allowed to describe dialogue written by the author of Blood Meridian as “sophomoric pseudo-philosophical drivel”?
– As we are sitting through it, yes.
(Onscreen Bardem asks, “Do you know what a bolito is?”
– I know! Seamen use those.
– Is Fassbender going to show it to us again? Oh, it’s a different bolito.
– So everyone warns Counselor Fassbender that he’s taking a huge risk and getting himself into trouble, but nothing is shown us so we have to take their word for it.
– Fine the movie is less interested in the procedural than the philosophical, but the philosophy is so…baduy.
– Why did he say “My back’s against the wall?” His life is fine, he just gave Penelope Cruz a humongous diamond.
– I love Fassy, but he needs to moisturize. Brad Pitt is 13 years older and they look to be the same age.
– Where are we having dinner afterwards?
– Exactly what I was thinking.
– It’s never a good sign when you’re watching a movie by a major director, with big stars, written by an important novelist, and you’d rather think of food.
– Oh, I’ve heard about the catfish scene. Gross.
– Pardon the disrespect, but this is like two old guys trying really hard to be cool.
– I want Al Pacino’s Scarface to turn up with a machine gun. “Say hello to my leetle fren!”
– What about Shi Lin?
– I’m tuning out the dialogue, but I like the furniture and the decor.
– You can’t make movies about Mexican drug cartels anymore. Breaking Bad was too good.
– Look, it’s Hank Schrader! Miss you, Hank!
– Wooden Spoon?
– What was the point of that scene with Edgar Ramirez in church?
– Or of John Leguizamo’s appearance?
– Or of Bruno Ganz’s?
– So Bruno could use the word “cautionary”. Tan-tan-tan!
– That monologue by Ruben Blades is straight out of a high school literary journal.
– CPK?
– Incoherent storytelling and ridiculous dialogue. Even the musical score is slapdash. Sumptuous visuals, but for what?
– Great, it’s over but I still don’t know what was happening.
– And I still don’t care.

Verdict: Skip it. Spare yourself.

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