Lou Lumenick

Lou Lumenick

Movies

Stars make bad investment in Ridley Scott’s ‘Counselor’

Like “Traffic’’ on a massive dose of downers, Ridley Scott’s “The Counselor’’ is a great-looking and star-filled but lethally pretentious, talky, lethargic drama about drug smuggling across the US-Mexican border.

Except for when Cameron Diaz’s character doffs her panties and pleasures herself up against the windshield of her stupefied boyfriend’s convertible (sans actual nudity), it’s a snoozy bore.

“The Counselor’’ can’t honestly be classified a thriller because nearly every plot twist is telegraphed by reams of stilted dialogue provided by novelist Cormac McCarthy in his first original screenplay.

“The counselor” is an unnamed lawyer, played by Michael Fassbender, whom we first see performing oral sex on his fiancée (Penélope Cruz) in their real-estate-porn home, then purchasing a huge diamond ring for her in Amsterdam.

To pay for the ring and their lavish lifestyle, the counselor makes a “one-time’’ investment in a drug deal, despite a lecture about morality and the potentially very ugly downside from a middleman in the deal (a ponytailed Brad Pitt, rocking designer suits and suffering an especially gory demise in a relatively small supporting role).

It’s not surprising at all that things go horribly wrong. A septic-waste truck smuggling the drugs — mind-numbingly shown over and over — is hijacked. The cartel is not inclined to accept the counselor’s (true) protestations that it’s just a coincidence that he is the court-appointed lawyer for the mother (Rosie Perez) of the culprit.

A very fine actor, as we saw again last week in “12 Years a Slave,’’ Fassbender doesn’t have much to do except look increasingly worried — and cry in several scenes — in a severely underwritten role, while Cruz functions strictly as a potential victim.

The counselor is also partnered in a nightclub with a wackier investor (Javier Bardem, who has no scenes with real-life wife Cruz) in the same drug deal.

His loquacious character sports a spiky, Brian Grazer-esque fright wig that’s even worse than the infamous pageboy he wore in “No County For Old Men,’’ the vastly superior adaptation of McCarthy’s novel.

Bardem is encouraged to go way over the top, but it’s nowhere near as scary as the hamming indulged in by Diaz as his psychotic girlfriend.

Miscast in a role originally intended for Angelina Jolie, she makes a highly improbable criminal mastermind who, in the film’s most ridiculous scene, tries to pre-confess her sins to an unwilling priest.

But then, what would you expect from a character who is not only equipped with a pair of pet cheetahs but a soliloquy about them? Like every other scene in this movie, it drones on and on.

For all its endless prattle about morality, “The Counselor’’ is a rare movie about drugs that doesn’t show drug use or its consequences — at least for users. For those in the business, it can be very grisly indeed.