The Counselor

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 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. (02/12/2013)

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. (27/11/2013)

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. (21/06/2014)

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)