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Source: Philadelphia Daily NewsOct.迷你倉 25--"THE COUNSELOR" warns eloquently and at length about the threat posed by spreading drug violence, but the effect is surprising. After an uneventful hour of watching this windy gabfest, here's what you're thinking: "Shoot somebody, already."I mean, there's not much doubt about what's to come. Among the first images? A couple of swells (Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem) mix Manhattans and watch their pet cheetahs chase down jackrabbits in the border country desert.It's foreshadowing to a fault, and in case you miss the implication, here comes a small army of prestigious actors to drop eloquent hints -- via the language of screenwriter Cormac McCarthy -- about the carnage to come.Michael Fassbender has the title role as an ambitious lawyer who wants to buy his girlfriend (Pen幨ope Cruz) an expensive diamond, financed by a onetime drug deal investment via a shady client (Bardem).The latter tries to warn the lawyer away, and, more memorably, so does a money launderer played by Brad Pitt. He finds wonderful words to convey the sticky ruthlessness of the drug trade.The speeches are quintessential McCarthy -- lyrical, evocative, but spare and uncannily to the point. Where the movie departs from classic McCarthy is in its lurid sexuality, never a subject the author has addressed with much gusto. Here, Diaz mini storageamps her way through a role that has her doing something to a Ferrari (car-nal knowledge?) that heretofore she's done only with Justin Timberlake in "Bad Teacher."I found it a bit ridiculous, and a bit too literal as an expression of her desire for material things. Also obvious are the movie's big themes -- if you expect the spreading moral stain of drug murders to stop at u嫫ez City, says "The Counselor," you're kidding yourself. There are no bystanders.Ridley Scott tries to build a movie around one, and it's hopeless. Fassbender's lawyer is a peripheral player, an investor whose job in the movie is to field increasingly anxious phone calls as details dribble in of faraway complications.Fassbender doesn't even get any good lines. He sits and listens, for instance, as Bruno Ganz delivers a wonderful soliloquy about the romantic meaning of diamonds. It's great stuff.But in movies, dialogue exists to serve action. As John Huston put it, action is the language of film. Language is the language of books.What action we do have -- backloaded, I must warn you -- is colorfully delivered by Scott, who, by the way, is 75. McCarthy is 80. So you can't say Hollywood is no country for old men.------Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Philadelphia Daily News Visit the Philadelphia Daily News at .philly.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉