THE COUNSELLOR (18, 117 mins) ** Starring Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Rosie Perez, Bruno Ganz, Goran Visnjic. Director: Ridley Scott.

Audiences may require counselling sessions after two hours of twisted desire and treachery in the company of Ridley Scott’s erotically-charged thriller.

Cameron Diaz’s all-guns-blazing portrayal is accompanied by terrific performances from Michael Fassbender and Penelope Cruz. All three are badly let down, though, by Cormac McCarthy’s overly complicated and wordy script, which isn’t remotely interested in the characters’ emotional turmoil, just their suffering.

It’s a far cry from the nuances of the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning adaptation of McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men, which elegantly offset his penchant for graphic violence with macabre humour and rich characterisation.

Fassbender plays a nameless Counsellor, whose girlfriend Laura (Cruz) tearfully accepts his marriage proposal.

The Counsellor has invested his fortune in a drug trafficking operation across the Texas-Mexico border. Inevitably, the deal goes bad and the Counsellor is marked for death along with two associates from the criminal underworld – floral-shirted playboy Reiner (Bardem) and swaggering cowboy Westray (Pitt).

Meanwhile, Reiner is distracted by his gold-toothed girlfriend Malkina (Diaz), who owns two pet cheetahs.

The Counsellor looks glorious, courtesy of Scott’s impeccable visuals, but all of that style means nothing when we can’t forge an emotional bond to the characters as they wallow through the mire.

Fassbender wrings himself dry of tears as he realises Westray’s words are right: “If your definition of a friend is someone who would die for you, then you don’t have any.”

Cruz is luminous, providing sweetness and light to counterbalance Diaz’s slinky predator. But dialogue is sodden with dense philosophical musings on the fragility of life, and when one doomed player takes an inordinate amount of time explaining the intricacies of a device that tightens around the neck of a victim, we know it’s only a matter of time before Scott realises this grisly vision in blood-drenched close-up.

He doesn’t disappoint – but his film certainly does.