The Counselor

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THE COUNSELOR (2013) * Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, Ruben Blades, Goran Visnjic, Dean Norris, (uncredited: John Leguizamo) Disappointing neo-noir from Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy (his first - and should be his last - original screenplay) which makes not-a-lick-of-sense about titular Fassbender (surprisingly wooden) who finds himself in over his head in a drug deal gone awry involving mysterious cowboy middleman PItt (far-too-sedate here), an obnoxious nightclub owner (Bardem relying on wild-hair and rock star accouterments instead of 'acting), and a drug cartel out for bloody vengeance. The cardinal sin of this potboiler is the first leaden hour cannot compensate for its too-quick-to-kill final one and wasting Cruz completely. While Diaz is the film's saving grace as a femme fatale with a feline complex nothing else is worthy or remarkable except how much of a dud this truly is.

I write this as a Mexican living near the border, meaning, as a direct witness of the drug war. I loved Heli, and I loved the Counsellor, this is why. I went to the cinema to see "The Counselor" expecting to watch a crime movie almost as entertaining as the old school Scorcece. It ended up being a fantastic and sublime meditation about the process of dehumanization that drug trafficking detonates (I'm using the word 'sublime' here in its Kantian definition: Any phenomena that surpasses our imagination and make us watch in anguish or awe). Fantastic dialogs, which although unlikely because we will never find lawyers and killers as poetic as the ones depicted on this movie (Cormac McCarthy, after all, is a great writer) summarize and propose precise reflections on how little we really understand about the violence and brutality of drug trafficking. It's not cryptic dialogs as some suggest, you just have to pay close attention to the details. Adding that the violence displayed in the film is unbelievably cruel considering that this is a AAA movie ( big budget, great director, big-name casting, famous writer, etc), this become the most pleasant surprise I've watched this year. And the most politically incorrect: You never submit a AAA's audience to this kind of dialog and cruelty, yet Scott risk it, with great results. I do not recommend it as a film that intents to be realistic. Scott never wanted to do that. The intention of this film is to be a poetic articulation of the distance between humanity and inhumanity and the process that transforms one into the other. 10/10 The movie of the year for me. I don't care the critics are destroying it. This is one of those moves that will make me seem like a hipster (Maybe I am one): People are simply not getting it.

Apparently I am one of the few who came into this movie with no pre- conceived ideas of what it would actually be like. I saw it and got it as it was directed by Ridley Scott, written by a great author and had a decent cast list. I never saw any trailers or reviews and just had the briefest of description of the story. I'll tell ya, its the only way to go. On the other hand this can also backfire with some movies....a lot of movies...so it is not worth pursuing but for this particular movie it was one of the real pleasures of movie watching. The film is one of the best I have seen for a long, long, time. From the direction, to the story (Holy man what a script, absolutely brilliant) to the superb acting all round, it had everything...and in buckets. As an example each of the main characters gets a chance to make a speech and all do well (my favourite being Bruno Ganz's)and if people were left totally bemused by the film after watching the trailer then you need to stop watching trailers. I have not watched any for this and probably for the better. As for the points about the plot going nowhere are the story being disjointed I would say to these people ...... stop watching trailers! Everything is very well explained by the Mexican drug barron near the end and funnily enough probably at the beginning by Javier Bardem. If you want a movie about drug violence and explosions and murders and the rest there are plenty out there. This is sooo not the movie for you. Just to sum up this is a brilliant movie and worth seeing on the fly. All the actors give probably one of their best performances in their roles and Scott's direction is fantastic as always. But where the movie really stands out (and really how movies should be first judged) is in the script. Highly recommended. 10/10

There was nothing for me to like about this movie. The story evolves around a Counsellor and the people surrounding him. For reasons unbeknown to us he decides to go into the drug business, and pseudo-intellectual existential dialogues between the protagonists ensue, with the main focus being on greed and how sexual everything appears to them. Cheetahs chasing jackrabbits is sexual, a yellow Ferrari is so sexual that Diaz' character decides to make-out with it (yes, you read that correctly). The Counsellor is constantly being counselled on life and it's meaning by philosophical drug-dealers and cartel members. The tediousness of these overdrawn, often repetitive and rather self-indulged exchanges make the film feel so ill paced. The chemistry between the two main couples (Fassbender-Cruz, Bardem-Diaz) was non-existent. The characters are hardly developed. Were we suppose to empathise with the Counsellor? The acting was NOT good. The ultimate attraction to this film, for me, was the cast who in it's majority has seldom - if ever - let me down. And yet, here, even they were, to put it mildly, not on top form. The emphasis had been given on the aforementioned dialogue, something that was more obvious when the main plot of the film became increasingly convoluted and thus hard to follow. At the end all I felt was content that it was over. This is, unfortunately, the worst film I've seen this year.

Mcarthy delivers his first screenplay. It was everything I had hoped for and more. Ridley Scott respected the storytelling of Mcarthy in such a way I can only assume the screenplay was almost untouched. The movie played like a novel. The character development and especially the dialogue felt like it was ripped from the pages of an unpublished Mcarthy book. On a raw level, this film tells the story of a lawyer who embraces greed and decides to take a path which leads him into a world of violence and deception. Masked by a world of glamor and glitter, his vision and decisions are clouded and he is unable to accept what consequences might be in store for him. To look deeper into the film it is filled with symbolism. Greed, betrayal, life and death. Death has no meaning. This is a concept Mcarthy incorporated heavily in "No Country For Old Men". I expect this movie to do horribly at the box office. I attended a midnight screening alongside "Bad Grandpa". "Bad Grandpa" had a full theater. A crowd of mostly men in their early twenties. (I should note that I am also in my early twenties). I was accompanied in my theater with four other people. Two of whom I think I heard walk out. I wanted to clap at the end. Instead the theater was silent as the credits rolled. It's almost a shame. This film is a masterpiece of cinema. Examine it as thus and you will enjoy yourself. DavidScottFilms.com @DavidScottFilms

The Counselor is one of the most bizarre movies I've ever seen. Ever since it came out I was intrigued how it got very mixed reviews when it had such an amazing cast and crew. But now I know. I'll start with the positives because there actually is plenty to like in this movie. The acting first and foremost is phenomenal, particularly Fassbender and Bardem. It's the only reason you care about anything that's happening. The directing is slick and stylish, and there are a few scenes that are actually brilliant to see unfold. Some lines of dialogue are powerful. Cameron Diaz was good. I'm already running out of positive things to say so let's get right into it. This movie is a hot mess. There are a hundred characters in this damn thing, it's over 2 hours long when it shouldn't have been, every scene could've been cut in half and the movie would've been all the better for it. It's hard to keep up with all the crap going on because it's so scatterbrained in its storytelling. And that's weird to say because Bardem's character tells some really captivating and hilarious stories. But the movie itself is so wordy and self-indulgent that even if you want to keep up with everything that's happening, there's no good reason to. It's an exercise in tedium after a while. It's like the writer said, "Let's see how many words I can squeeze into this scene before the audience has no idea what the * it's about," and he did that for every damn scene. And again, there are glimmers of brilliance, hell the actual story is really interesting, but goddamn that just makes it all the more frustrating. The plot can be boiled down to a lawyer getting himself in a bad situation with drug guys and how he tries to get out of it. It sounds like a focused plot, but the movie complicates it beyond comprehension. One minute I'm totally entranced by what's happening on screen, anxiously awaiting what's going to happen next, and then the movie will jump to a scene with random characters we've never seen before talking about nonsense, and they just keep talking and talking until I forget what I was entranced with in the first place. Seriously, if every scene in the movie was cut in half, it could be an excellent crime thriller. There are some truly brutal moments in the movie, and some thought-provoking ones, but they get stretched out and morphed to the point of bewilderment. Some of the lines in this movie are cringe-worthy. Like, did they really have to repeat what the other person said in five different ways? No? That's what I thought. And that's why this movie pisses me off. The Counselor will definitely impress some people. If you can handle an absolute clusterf*ck of a movie with a few amazing scenes and superb acting then you'll probably enjoy it. But even that makes it sound better than it is, because the great scenes are so few and far between you're left thinking, "Why on earth did they go in this direction? They had something great here!" It's a baffling movie, really, and the more I think about it the more it upsets me because of how great it could've been. Its potential was so clear, it's like they tried to make it as convoluted and stupid as possible. Worst of all, the movie takes itself dead seriously. It thinks it's so great, and again for the millionth time, IT COULD'VE BEEN. But no, The Counselor refuses to take other people into consideration. It's so in love with itself it gives no one else a reason to love it, let alone care. Watch at your own risk.

The film may be judged upon different merits. Technically, it is a thing of great beauty in the style of super-crisp cinematography and high-level production values frequently seen in Scott's contemporary films such as American Gangster and Prometheus - there is nothing to be faulted in this area of the film's construction. I believe that the writing is that which has created the vast disparity in professional reviews. The New York Times (?) reviewer gave the film her highest marks whereas others viewed the film as being sub par or even disastrous. How could this be? Perhaps because of the origins of the script, from the hand of McCarthy, a literary master. I was recently watching a Tennessee Williams play adapted for the screen by Kazan, and I could feel the weight of its literary origins. This was how I felt watching TC. The plot, setting, and, more generally, the world, McCarthy creates are vehicles for the theme, that of the human condition, man's striving, reaching, cunning, and ultimately, his animal nature. This was the risk taken by Scott in allowing such a heavy-weight to pen the script, that the film would be driven by theme rather than plot, and that it would not quite fit in with today's banal, CGI-infected cinema culture, which, perhaps, it pretended to be by its glossy exterior. The "overly-long" dialog was especially trying for short attention spans but those who may have enjoyed the great cinematic classics over the past century will adore this creation. Through thematic contrivance is created a jungle filled with various inhabitants. Through a form of Darwinian selection, the weak are slowly exiled from this unforgiving world until only those with an appetite for blood and an intolerance for weakness are allowed to remain. There is enough blood and perversion to keep you smiling, but the weight of its humanity will grip your soul. Please ignore the critics, Mr. Scott, and continue allowing your cinematic muse to light your path, even if Hollywood keeps telling you that you must help pay the bills. (See Mr. Welles, not Mr. Spielberg.)