The Counselor

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. (09/02/2014)

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. (05/03/2014)

Gentlemen Scott and McCarthy tried, that's for sure, the actors tried even harder - all the familiar faces here give absolutely brilliant performances - but in the end, it's still the screenplay that fails under Scott's direction. It's sometimes very brutal, surprisingly quite perverse, but some characters appear as the script needed, the viewer most of the time has no idea what it's actually about. The whole time I kept thinking that as a book, it could work great, but in a movie, the audience simply doesn't have the time to contemplate it. I'll have to find that book sometime. (09/12/2013)

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. (23/12/2013)

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. (27/11/2013)