British-born director Ridley Scott has made some landmark films (Blade Runner; Alien; Thelma and Louise) and some dreadful tosh (the ponderous Gladiator; the weep-worthy Hannibal; the thoroughly nasty Black Hawk Down). His new one belongs near the bottom of the tosh list but it's not really his fault.
The title's Texas lawyer (Fassbender), who is never named, is head-over-heels with Laura (Cruz) and planning to finance their happily-ever-after by backing a drug deal with a 4000 per cent return. Spoiler alert: things turn to custard. When Laura asks how bad it is, the answer is "Let's say pretty bad. Then multiply it by ten."
A drug deal going wrong is hardly a new story idea but Scott deals with it well.
He fills the screen with his big, dense visuals and takes us in close to his actors - an opening bedroom scene is almost uncomfortably intimate - in a way that demands much of them. He also delivers several spectacular set-pieces: one's a shootout on a desert highway; another involves a high-speed motorcycle and a taut wire at neck height.
But the film's fatal handicap is its point of interest: it's the first original screenplay by the doyen of fiction set in the American Southwest, Cormac McCarthy.
