‘The Counselor’ demands viewers’ avid attention

DIAZ. Portrays a feline, feral predator for the first time.

Now at the peak of his filmmaking and storytelling prowess, Ridley Scott stuns and deeply moves viewers with his latest film, “The Counselor.” It’s a starkly uncompromising view of the cold and clammy world of Mexican drug cartels, where murder is a way of life, and only professionals survive.

Being new to the game, the film’s lead character, played by Michael Fassbender, is not only shown up for the slick but callow tyro he is, but everything and everyone he holds dear are brought down with him, just to teach him a lesson that he’ll never forget.

At film’s start, the lawyer is having the best of all worlds, making such a good living that he’s able to buy a four-carat, “perfect” diamond for his fiancée (Penelope Cruz), without battling an eyelash.

Unfortunately, he also decides to start playing with the big, bad boys to increase his income, and buys into a $20-million drug deal. Unknown to him, other players involved in the scheme are not on the up-and-up, and he and his fiancée end up as “collateral damage” in the scheme when it turns sour.

Their participation may be minimal, but they are still disposed of with absolute finality and tragedy, because they have dared to rush into an unknown world where even devils fear to tread!

Aside from the film’s chilling developments, its cast of edgy and complex characters is its major draw, not just with viewers, but also with the production’s big-name stars, who have eagerly acceded to playing them because of the unusual challenge they offer.

Thus, Brad Pitt plays against type as a slightly rancid wheeler-dealer—and, most strikingly of all, Cameron Diaz kisses her ditzy “sexy comedienne” image goodbye and portrays a feral, feline predator, complete with tattooed spots running down her seductively arched back.

A third major draw is the film’s script, which is suffused with mordantly wise and weary musings about life, love and death. Some viewers may get turned off by the script’s artful and perhaps even arty insights, but we go with its literary flow, because it ups the production’s ante by providing a welcome artistic and even philosophical contrast to the movie’s very violent goings-on.

The violence in the film is unusual, because its diverse perpetrators aren’t content with just bumping people off in the usual, expected ways they opt for more unusual and creative innovations, like decapitation and such. Even Pitt’s character is disposed off in a most attention-calling way, on a busy London sidewalk, at that.

Speaking of Pitt’s character, he too learns a lesson he’ll never forget. Because he thinks that he’s crafty enough to “disappear” when things get too hot and start a new life somewhere else. Unknown to him, however, he’s being secretly observed all the time, and he doesn’t get very far—at all!

In this regard, Cameron Diaz’s character looms as a major player, even if others dismiss her as just a sexy, spaced-out bimbo. They soon find out otherwise, to their great shock—but, it’s too late for regrets!

Adding to Diaz’s character’s compelling “appeal” is the film’s penchant for involving her in unexpected situations, like her impulsive decision to go to confession, even if she isn’t a Catholic. Imagine the poor confessor’s consternation when she insists on telling him her sordid sins—even if he doesn’t want to hear them!

“The Counselor” is full of such weird and even macabre twists and turns that it demands—and gets—our avid attention, from start to finish!