THE COUNSELOR

THE COUNSELOR has been comprehensively drubbed by the film reviewing community, recalling Roger Ebert's seminal review of Vincent Gallo's THE BROWN BUNNY, along the lines of "I've had colonoscopies that were more funny."  And just as I really liked THAT film, I actually rather like THE COUNSELOR. Or rather, I should say that I'm fascinated by why people are so horrified by it.  It's not that I enjoyed watching it so much as I enjoyed all the provocations it presented as I watched it.  

The movie opens with and maintains a rather opaque narrative style - a mash-up of abstruse conversations in beautifully designed international locales inter-cut with grungy Mexican drug runners pushing a truck full of cocaine disguised as human shit over the US border.  The Counselor of the title is a naive but greedy lawyer (Michael Fassbender) who is defined his love of the equally naive Laura (Penelope Cruz).  The Counselor works for Reiner - a flamboyant drug dealer and club owner played by Javier Bardem as a cross between Brian Grazer and Brad Pitt in Twelve Monkeys. Which is weird because Brad Pitt also stars in the film as a kind of a redneck magus, who tries to wise the Counselor up, but to little avail. The plot, such as it is, sees someone hijack the drug shipment and pin it on our crew, which violent and grim consequences.

Bardem does Grazer's fright wig

The moral of the story, is that there are no morals. There's just the hunt. This is a fascist world in which weakness, and flamboyance, and hubris are brought low in a manner that is so foul and evil as to be shocking.  The moral is that you should not be shocked.  There is a brutal simplicity and fascination in seeing faceless men pull off brutal procedural heists. But also something bewildering about seeing actors such as Toby Kebbell and Natalie Dormer pop up in small roles that hint at something more fascinating that isn't given a chance to develop. 

Anyone looking for the redemptive final act of Cormac McCarthy's sublime novel, The Road, is looking in vain.  And critics who have panned the film have typically blamed McCarthy for forcing this word-heavy, abstract, opaque script on a high quality cast and director.  I disagree.  This is like a sleazy B-movie filtered through an art-house lens -  as grungy and elliptical as Raymond Chandler - as absurd and meaningless and provocative.  As an example, I'd give you the notorious scene in which Reiner's wonderfully unapologetic and spiky girlfriend Malkina fucks a car.  This is as shocking as Chandler's depiction of the nympho Carmen Sternwood would've been in THE BIG SLEEP.  But what is the movie really focussed on? Not her sexual act - she is confident, unapologetic and uncaring about what you or I or Reiner might make of it.  The movie focusses on the reaction of the men in the picture - their horror, fear, inability to process.  In fact, I would argue that THE COUNSELOR is a shocking and reviled movie because it's so radical.  No-one's a good guy.  The bad guys are pussies.  And the bad girl doesn't care what you think.

THE COUNSELOR has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

THE COUNSELOR is on release almost everywhere except Taiwan where it will be released on December 6th and in Italy where it will be released on January 30th 2014.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE SUNSET LIMITED - Fides et Ratio

THE SUNSET LIMITED is a philosophical drama based upon the stage-play by Cormac McCarthy (THE ROAD, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN). As both stage-play and film, it is rather an odd fish - dispensing with the conventional requirements of plot and character development for a straightforward dialogue between two characters, "Black" and "White". Tommy Lee Jones (who also directs) plays "White", a dessicated college professor and atheist who wants desperately to commit suicide. Samuel L Jackson plays "Black", an intelligent but poorly educated former convict and Christian convert, who stopped "White" killing himself before the movie begins. The movie is, then, simply a debate between these two men, the atheist and the believer. Both are articulate, passionate and sympathetic and the stakes are the very highest. Thankfully, we are spared any pat answers. 

Why is the film worth watching? Why wouldn't you just read the stage-play? Given the suitably restrained direction, photography and score, the real answer is for the brilliant central performances by Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson. Jones has, I think, the easier task, as the clever man, convinced he is right, and essentially unchanged by his experience. Jackson, on the other hand, has to portray a man whose faith is challenged by a brilliant defence of nihilism - by a superficial failure - and yet emerge triumphant. 

THE SUNSET LIMITED was released in the US in February 2011 and in Spain in April. It is available to rent and own.

London Film Fest Day 3 - THE ROAD

Re-uniting the team behind the brutal, brilliant Aussie Western, THE PROPOSITION, director John Hillcoat has created a devastating and faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel about The Man and his son, The Boy, journeying South, trying to stay alive, in a post-apocalyptic world.

A terrible natural disaster has occurred - no-one explains why or how - and the world is left covered in ash, perpetually fogged and growing colder by the day. The animals have died, the trees are falling, and the canned food and fuel are fast running out. With a bleak future, many families have chosen to commit suicide. This is the view of The Wife - she thinks survival is not living, and that it's cruel to bring a child into this world. Her husband, The Man, disagrees. He sees survival, "carrying the fire", as the only choice of "the good guys". His wife suspects that deep down, this might be because he just doesn't have the courage to kill himself and his family. And so, a

few years later, The Man and his beloved son travel south. They are tired, hungry, and the young child has seen things no-one should see. The Man wants to train The Boy to be hardened - to survive - even when The Man has died. The Boy wants to share food with starving passers-by. And even though The Man lives in fear and disgust of the cannibals - and wants to preserve his humanity and avoid such degradation - slowly, slightly, he becomes as cruel, culminating in an horrific humiliation scene.

THE ROAD is a stark, brutal, provocative and deeply affecting film. Not as unbearable as the book, but maybe having read the book I was prepared better. Viggo Mortensen gives a career-best performance as The Man and Kodi Smit-McPhee is heart-breaking as The Boy. We utterly believe in and care about their relationship. Charlize Theron is convincing as the nihilistic Wife. John Hillcoat creates a savage wasteland in which they travel but best of all, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis create a wonderful score.

My only criticism of the film is that the ending is less ambiguous than the novel. But I shan't say more for fear or ruining the outcome for people who have read the book. It's the only thing that prevents this from being one of my films of the year.

THE ROAD played Venice, Toronto and London 2009. It goes on release in South Korea next week. It opens in the USA in November 25th; in Belgium and France on December 2nd; in Russia on December 10th; in December 25th in Finland; in Norway and the UK on January 8th; in Argentina on January 21st; in Australia on January 28th; in the Netherlands and Brazil on February 4th; and in New Zealand on March 18th.

Eventual tags: charlize theron, cormac mccarthy, drama, guy pearce, javier aguirresarobe, joe penhall, john hillcoat, kodi smit-mcphee, nick cave, robert duvall, warren ellis, viggo mortensen

The Coen Bros. return to form with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a beautifully crafted, darkly comic thriller adapted by the Coen Brothers from an acerbic novel by Cormac McCarthy. A hick Texan called Llewelyn Moss stumbles on the aftermath of a drug deal gone horribly wrong and in a moment of weakness abandons a dying Mexican and absconds with a suitcase full of money. Problem is, a psychopathic murderer called Anton Chigurh is tracking the money and Moss, via a transponder stuck in the briefcase. Meanwhile, a decent old-fashioned copper, Ed Tom Bell, is trying to reach out to Moss via his wife Carla Jean. So the film is essentially about two men - a murderer and a thief - stalking each other through motels in small towns - and the impact of this gruesome hunt on a mild-mannered Sherriff. The violence is graphically depicted as is its aftermath. We feel every bullet wound and see every attempt to repair the human body. Watching blood ooze from Moss' body, or Chigurh jabbing lidocaine into his punctured leg - the impact on the audience is visceral. The tension is constant and intense. I can't remember a recent thriller where so much attention was paid to the shadows cast by madmen hiding behind doors. But what makes this such a unique film is the fact that the dialogue is so darkly funny. It's really impressive the way in which Cormac McCarhy and the Coen Brothers manage to bring out the quirkiness of Texan idiom without under-mining the general air of menace. Moreover, despite the fact that a lot of the characters speak and dress like the kind of stereotypes mocked in the Coen Bros.' O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?, they are fully developed, magnetic characters. Tommy Lee Jones, who has so often played these Texan law officer parts, is particuarly sympathetic as the world-weary Sherriff, who simply cannot comprehend modern, random violence and prefers not to carry a gun. In an era of CSI, it's also refreshing to see an old-fashioned copper check out a scene and use good old-fashioned logic to work out what went wrong. Josh Brolin is a revelation as Llewelyn Moss. He's far more than just a dumb hick who got lucky - he's loyal, honest (after a fashion), resourceful and ballsy. Faced with a psychopath, he doesn't back down. He's a tremendously likeable character. However, I suspect the character that will become an icon is Javier Bardem's ultimate bad-ass, Anton Chigurh, with his laughable bowl-hair-cut; sinister, deadpan use of idiom; and quirky method of despatching locks and people alike.

All three actors are worthy of Best (Supporting) Actor nods. Indeed, it's a measure of how finely balanced this movie is that the movie seems to belong to all three actors equally. In genuinely supporting roles, Kelly Macdonald puts on a fine Texan ccent as Carla Moss and Woody Harrelson has a funny turn as a bounty hunter. Garret Dillahunt is also hysterically funny as the Sherriff's sidekick. In the end, though, it's the talent behind the camera that makes NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN the masterpiece that it is: in particular, Roger Deakins' attention to the framing and lighting of every shot and the Coen Bros. perfect marriage to the source material.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN could knock off every film on my Best of 2007 list bar 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS. Roger Deakins would certainly make the Best DP list and the Coen Bros. would make the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director lists. This is a tremendous return to form for film-makers who stunned us with FARGO but slipped into mediocrity, ill-judgement and self-parody with INTOLERABLE CRUELTY and THE LADYKILLERS. And to those critics who hold back a little - and criticise the denouement of this film - I simply can't understand what they object to.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN played Cannes, Toronto and Vienna 2007 and was released in the USA in November 2007. It opens in the UK on January 18th in Belgium, France and Australia on January 23rd and in Argentina on January 31st. It opens in Brazil, Russia, Estonia, Mexico, Iceland, Portugal, Slovakia, Norway and Sweden in February 2008. It opens in Greece, Denmark, Finland, Spain, Turkey, Singapore, Japan and Italy in March and in Germany on April 10th.