Directed by:
Ridley ScottScreenplay:
Cormac McCarthyCinematography:
Dariusz WolskiComposer:
Daniel PembertonCast:
Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, Edgar Ramirez, Natalie Dormer, Dean Norris, Goran Visnjic (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
The Counselor stars Michael Fassbender as the title character, a slick lawyer who is madly in love with Laura (Penelope Cruz). He asks her to marry him, and she agrees, though she is unaware that serious financial troubles have prompted him to fund a drug deal with a shady but established middle man (Brad Pitt), that could bring in millions. Part of the counselor's financial troubles stem from the fact that he's investing in a club being opened by his best friend Reiner (Javier Bardem), a hedonist and occasional client who has attained his wealth by any means necessary, and likes to keep his wife (Cameron Diaz) covered in all the accoutrements the wealthy enjoy. However, when the drug deal starts to go wrong, the counselor finds himself unprepared to deal with the fallout, and soon he's trying to protect his bride-to-be as well as himself from the wrath of a drug cartel that has no qualms about exacting revenge. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (12)
The basic problem with The Counselor is that Cormac McCarthy didn't write the movie script. And yet his writing is strongly recognizable underneath it all. Here, too, the characters are not really characters, but vehicles for the monologues that The Counselor follows and is confronted with. From that perspective, if the film can be compared to anything, it's Linklater's Waking Life. However, unlike Waking Life, here the key to deconstruction is still the main storyline, which even at the end has too many unknowns and is most likely counting on the viewer adding up the variables because of the way the characters have been sketched. Sure, The Counselor is unlikable – it is, after all, too ruthless and bleak and, more importantly, it translates that elusiveness of the Mexican business code in all its glory and, despite a certain tendency in Brad Pitt's character, realizes that there is no way to bring that code to a Western audience. If The Consultant were a book and someone capable of adapting it decided to do so, it would be just another No Country for Old Men.
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An elegantly cruel film in which the expensively dressed world of a treacherous lawyer obsessed with innocent women collides with Mexican cartel hell. Ridley Scott conveys this conflict not through action, but through dialogue. He doesn’t milk the audience’s emotions but uses an intellectual, even philosophical approach. The characters’ motivations are only suggested, and waiting for their (ambiguous) reactions and the escalation of tense situations are what drive the film forward. The philosophical musings are nothing special, but I enjoyed the acting performances and well-done visuals. If the plot had been more clearly constructed, I’d give it four stars. Cameron Diaz spreading her legs over the windshield of a Ferrari is unforgettable. The Counselor is a guilty pleasure in the form of an exercise in vanity.
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Brad Pitt plays a bastard, Michael Fassbender plays a bastard, Javier Bardem is both a pervert and a bastard. Penelope Cruz is good, especially in the beginning, but on the other hand she is not there that much. Cameron Diaz plays such a bitch that it made me sick. Nevertheless, all the acting performances are great, I just don’t really know who to focus on in order for the movie to appear at least a little bit likeable. This way it is Ridley Scott’s most unpleasant movie for me, and it doesn’t matter that it has an interesting story when I’m not able to enjoy it with these actors.
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Or: how the best living oversees writer and the best living British director didn’t really see eye to eye in matters of art. Each of them does their own thing regardless of the other. And so Cormac rolls out all the screenwriters’ tricks ignoring the purely symbolic metaphorical and existential level which is full of ambiguous characters, holding up mirrors, hidden motivations and declamations seemingly about nothing, but in reality about redemption, damnation, the (im)possibility to choose and predestination and its thriller storyline represents just a necessary (but smarter and more true to life than it might have seem), all connecting excuse. The other one concentrates on what makes sense from the genre film making point of view and so he doesn’t care about the characters, the message, let alone the symbolism of the movie. The result is so unique, peculiar and well casted (apart from that one exception that breaks the rule... Yes, I’m talking to you Cameron) that in some circles it’s on its way to becoming a cult movie and for rest it’s doomed to remain misunderstood, damned and heading the Razzies.
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The Counselor is a delightfully funny, sexy, meditative, gory, and intelligent film, and for me, one of the most modern of the 21st century. The style, elegance and extravagance of the film shines through. It is also worth mentioning the very solid cast, which features all of my favourite actors. Spoiler: the scene where Cameron Diaz fucks Javier Bardem's car and Brad Pitt's disarming here definitely the biggest highlights of the film! Action 4/10, Suspense 5/10, Gore 7/10, Story 7/10, Atmosphere 6/10.
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I will not stoop to commenting on the senility of Ridley Scott, because there are plenty of users aping similar big-mouthed statements from foreign reviews about last year's Prometheus. That said, it is still true that I am quite disappointed. Not that Ridley forgot how to direct – but that he is simply unrecognizable in The Counselor. It is all just Cormac McCarthy's self-absorbed screenplay, materialized into lazily rolling dialogues, framed by a pretty good side plot and very inconsistently cast. While Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt carry everything, Cameron Diaz turns out to be a casting misstep unlike any I can remember. Every gesture or word feels forced and wooden, making all the smaller positives (the soundtrack, the action flashes) almost forgotten. Given the creative team, I can't believe I'm stooping so low, but when even I, who easily let myself be captivated by the story, can see through the random fragments to the very end, something is wrong.
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With this film, I had to watch the key scenes over again to catch on and make all the motivations, behind-the-scenes games, and alliances click for me. The key moments were not the shootouts or executions of the film characters, but the dialogues. Carefully crafted and sophisticated dialogues, like when I eagerly played the conversation between the lawyer and the cartel boss three times to savor the subtle play of a predator toying with its prey. The Counselor was made for a specific layer of educated and tuned-in viewers, definitely not a film for a broad audience, and I wouldn't hesitate to label it a cult film in the original sense of the word - not as a commercially successful film, but rather a film that captivates a small group of connoisseurs. While Scott's Prometheus was downright dumb, The Counselor is a smart film. It's smart to the point of being annoying and unsympathetic. It's like a cross between No Country for Old Men and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It shares the same screenwriter and deals with the world of drug cartels and underworld characters, and it also has a narrative style that is difficult for the viewer to digest. The absence of characters to root for, for example, doesn't help. The only positive character who accidentally enters the world of dirty dealings is mercilessly crushed by events, and the rest of the twisted characters are simply competing to see how far they can go in their depravity. The screenwriter doses out information in small bits and keeps much to himself; you simply have to infer and process things where you would prefer to just consume. In any case, the final form of the film is much more influenced by Cormac McCarthy than Ridley Scott. I do have a few criticisms, for example, that the casting of the stereotypical actress Cameron Diaz wasn't reasonable, although thanks to the director's guidance, it didn't bother me too much. Scott knew what she was capable of as an actress and didn't burden her. Her sexual performance, which may be the icing on the cake for some viewers, felt unnecessary and cheap to me, and in a few other scenes, the crew wanted to play a little bit at being Tarantino. But from the originally intended four stars, I give it five because I won't hesitate to help a film that is so severely underrated. Overall impression: 90%.
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I think that people today won’t get this movie. It’s intended to be deep, but it’s terribly superficial. Which results in tense friction between both surfaces. The Counselor demonstrates just how Hollywood Scott’s style is. McCarthy wrote an incredible screenplay that breaks all the rules, unfortunately he didn’t make sure that the director applied the necessary parable to the movie. For something like that, I think someone else would be more suitable, Nicolas Winding Refn seems to me to the best choice. Personally, I like Scott’s style, so I was able to get over this point. The cast that he put together is admirable, but it maybe goes against the type proportions of the actors themselves. Fassbender is unusually nice, the evil that they talk about consists of just greed and snobbery. Pitt is fine, although a bit forced in places. Reiner is completely wrong for Bardem, he doesn’t play the role badly, but he’s simply the wrong type. Penny Cruz should be younger and more crazily in love, but she doesn’t make much of an appearance. And then there’s Cameron Diaz as Malkina. A monstrous, calculating bitch and probably the second most important character. McCarthy has probably never written a stronger female part. And Diaz took it on with flying colors. She’s good at swines, but Angelina would have suited better. And now we come to the biggest problem, which is the age rating. The Counselor hovers cleverly along the edge of the 15 rating, but this makes all the murder and sexual tension too sterile. The scene with the Ferrari is special and well delivered, but it doesn’t have the necessary shock effect that the characters talk about. Any torture in this movie is just talked about. It could be due to the artistic intention, but this takes away the credibility, the chilling edge of the picture. What’s the point of polished dialogs about death and doom if we see almost none of it? The Counselor isn’t a bad movie, it’s just too strange to like.
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A very tough and uncompromising film full of references, philosophy, life wisdom and truths, going against any audience trends, expecting a high level of intellect and the ability to read between the lines. Ambiguous, unclassifiable, yet sometimes hypnotic and captivating. For someone without insights in life, a film about nothing. For the rest, a strong experience. Saw the extended version.
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As much as I like the work of Ridley Scott (a lot) and Cormac McCarthy (a lot), I have to say that The Counselor impressed me primarily as an extremely pretentious film that (in roughly the following order) entertains, bores, bores, entertains, bores, bores, bores, bores. This makes me sad. It cannot be said that McCarthy wrote anything particularly badly, that Scott filmed anything badly, or that any of the actors acted badly. But I would have been much happier if McCarthy had written a book instead of a screenplay, in which I could read his dialogues in peace, return to them and think about them. Because when they come at me in such a powerful and pounding stream as is the case with this film, they don't make me feel good at all. And that's a shame. Now I have no choice but to buy the book version of the script (which I would have bought anyway), read it, and then give the film another chance. Probably.
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Scott and McCarthy certainly tried, no doubt about it, and the actors tried even harder - all the familiar faces delivered absolutely great performances. But in the end, it's still the screenplay that falters under Scott's direction. It's often very harsh, and surprisingly quite twisted at times, but some characters appear as the screenplay required, and most of the time, the viewer has no idea what's really going on. Throughout, I kept thinking that as a book, it could work wonderfully, but as a film, the viewer simply doesn't have the time to contemplate it. I'll have to get that book sometime.
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Slightly in the "O. Russell" vein, a chatty conversation piece that very slowly tightens all the screws and is truly brilliantly plotted. At last a pretty decent role for Cameron Diaz after a hell of a long time. In general, all of the casting is exceedingly well done and watching everyone in action is intoxicating. Ridley Scott has come up with a slightly different version of an excursion into the world of narcotics and the mafia, relying on sometimes unnaturally constructed dialogue with often philosophical undertones. With a few exceptions, there are no distinctive action scenes, and basically the whole time it creates a rather bland and insipid impression. On the other hand, it seems to me that this is what the charm of the whole film is largely based on, and the play with the viewer really comes down to when you're mostly saying to yourself: "This is great, properly creepy and interesting dialogue, but when is something going to happen or when is something decent going to happen...?" At a certain point (it almost feels unintentional) the screws really start to tighten and there are some pretty cool explicit scenes. Bottom line – The Counselor is definitely not for everyone, it's actually quite a specific (maybe even slightly experimental) taste for connoisseurs. I don't consider myself a connoisseur, and I still enjoyed it very much.
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