It’s unclear what to expect from “The Counselor” before you actually sit down to see the movie. Certainly, there are a number of big names in it, from Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz to Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.  And the film’s director, Ridley Scott, is hardly a slouch, having made his name on films such as “Alien” and “Black Hawk Down.” The film’s titular character is played by Michael Fassbender, who you would probably recognize as Erik Lensherr, aka Magnito, from “X-Men: First Class.”  He has also played major characters in “Inglorious Bastards” and “Prometheus.” With a lineup like this, one would expect an action movie, especially considering the content of the previews.

“The Counselor” is not an action movie. Brad Pitt never draws a gun. It isn’t a romance, or a gore-fest, though there is romance, sex and violence. It is neither a comedy nor a tragedy, not by the modern definitions nor by the classical Greek ones. There is no hero, and while one could argue that the Colombian Cartels play the role of the villain, they are portrayed in the movie more as a force of nature than anything else.

The acting is wonderful. Cameron Diaz manages, somehow, to make you hate her within a few scenes of appearing on screen. Penelope Cruz, though given a very simple role of loyal love interest, still manages to make the character sympathetic and engaging. Michael Fassbender goes from confidant and dynamic with his girl to nervous while dealing with the drug dealers to panicked and over his head, all while managing to not over-act, as many lesser actors would be tempted to do. Likewise, I have nothing bad to say about the cinematography, directing or editing. Everyone did a great job.

So why did I leave the theater wondering if it was a good movie? On one level, the writing was wonderful. The characters are all human, believable and so real you can almost taste them. On another level, however, the movie lacks a central drive. We never grow to know any of the main characters well enough to really be sympathetic. “The Counselor” can be said to have a theme, but that theme is of nihilism and the inevitability of failure and paying for that failure. There is no light in this movie, no hope or redemption, just death and misery.

Done a different way, “The Counselor” could have been a social commentary. Evil people getting what they deserve, the exploitation of the third world by drug dealers, the contrast between the super-rich and the desperately poor. But the contrasts the movie makes, with it’s sudden shifts between philosophy and grit, avarice and destitution, simply leave one with a sense of surrealistic confusion. Perhaps that is what they were going for.

Thus we come to the greatest failure of this movie that is, in all other ways, a great film. Art is a medium of communication, and “The Counselor” does not say anything. It does so with great style, magnificent dialogue, wonderful acting and just enough violence and sex to spice things up, but in the end you are left feeling empty, wondering what, exactly, you just wasted the last two hours on.