Considering the heavy-hitters involved in Ridley Scott’s latest crime thriller, it’s baffling how all of “The Counselor’s” punches fail to connect.

Michael Fassbender plays the unnamed, titular character, an El Paso lawyer who for reasons unexplained gets involved with drug trafficker Reiner (Javier Bardem) in a shadowy business deal. When the deal goes south, the Counselor is left to deal with ominous but inevitable consequences.

Everything about the Counselor himself is referential and vague. It is explicitly stated by other characters that he is good-looking, wealthy, in love, greedy, and dumb. Except for the first and last points ,we are left to take the film at its word. Fassbender delivers a strong enough performance to warrant the focus of the film, but he is given very little to work with.

Points of omission such as these plague Cormac McCarthy’s script to the point of exasperation. Scenes depicting gang clashes over drugs being shipped from Juarez, Mexico, to a major US city divide the central narrative. These scenes of extraordinary violence make a valuable point about the brutality of the drug trade and the blood on the hands of consumers—and deserve their own film. Their presence in this film, however, one so devoid of identity and meaning, calls negative attention to The Counselor’s utter lack of connective tissue.

Excepting Bardem’s Reiner, who is an effective parody of material excess with his spectacularly colorful mannerisms and wardrobe, the rest of the cast fails to lend any weight to the proceedings. As Westray, Brad Pitt plays a sleazy middleman whose presence in the Counselor’s life (and the film itself) is inexplicable, serving only to warn him of the dangers of the drug world and then abandoning him when those dangers become a reality. Similarly, Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz play paper-thin characters whose performances essentially dissolve in the pulp.

There are pieces of a decent film to be found in the muddle. Some of “The Counselor”’s ruminations on greed, mortality and grief are genuinely interesting, especially when Reiner is onscreen. Unfortunately, these ruminations are misplaced and ill-defined, considering there isn’t much of a plot tying it all together.

What we’re left with is a gross underachievement of cinematic potential. “The Counselor” simply indulges in its own artistic voice, mistaking density for depth.

amaeche@mavs.coloradomesa.edu