The Counselor explodes with violence that is grisly, but not gratuitous: McCarthy has a point to make. Wars create monsters, and the drug war is no exception.
No amount of needless chatter can quite dilute the power of The Counselor’s grim endgame, especially given the way its writer and director conspire to keep the threat offscreen, like some terrible, unseen force of nature.
From start to finish, it is perfectly acted, with philosophical depth that only few may understand let alone truly appreciate.
The generally negative reviews illuminate only that the mass public and supposed 'professional' critics are blind to brilliant film making and flawless cinematic execution with this sort of power and magnitude. There are few films that will submerge you into a world this dark and thought provoking.
'This film is without a doubt, one of the most brilliant films I've seen in years'
After you wach this movie you can feel a hole into your stomach.This is not a movie is a greek tragedy. a very sad poem converted into a **** traffic of narchotics is just a background. it could be any other **** not a matter of good and bad like a police **** a matter of **** have to read Faulkner or melville or kafka to understand and feel and touch the greatness of some **** put together two genius like ridley Scott and Cormac Maccarthy and the result is this shakesperian tragedy.
No matter the jumps or interruptions of the plot they are intentional to make your brain start to work.
There is a sense of emptiness and loneliness that you can almost touch with your fingertips.
The mesage is that we are puppets in the hands of a higher **** like the ancient greek tragedies where the humans are mere instruments in the hands of the **** druglords take the place of ancient gods.they are unreachable and nobody can discuss their decissions.Nobody can see them
but you know they have eyes and slaves everywhere.
This is not a movie about drug traficking is about destiny,about human weaknesses and the evil they can bring into everybodys lives.
In short its not a movie for everybody but is great very great........... and also very devastating.
The film doesn't temper enough of Cormac McCarthy's excesses, but Ridley Scott and his ensemble find enough meat in his scenario to make for diverting, bloody pleasure.
I can quite understand why some will not take favor with The Counselor; one's who can only see what's put right in front of them. The mystical Cormac McCarthy presents some pieces and expects, demands his audience to pay close attention and then decide exactly what happened. Just like most of his characters we are only shown so much, but certainly enough to know up from down and right from wrong. A great thought provoking film, which I admit is one of my favorite types of films. I hate leaving a cinema knowing all I will ever know about a film. It's a shame great films like this, one's that leap far away from the mundane can only be appreciated by some while others expect the mundane and are thus disappointed by an 'outside the box' presentation. Outside the box is what you should crave!!
The Counselor is sharp, stylish cinema that cuts out all the crap and delivers only what it needs to & the rest is up to you.
If you're going to see The Counselor, make sure you see the "unrated extended edition" and not the theatrical cut. The theatrical cut really is as bad as you've heard; however the extended version, available on blu-ray, might be a flawed masterpiece. It's this version I'm considering here.
It runs 20-odd minutes longer but, paradoxically, feels shorter. Where writer Cormac McCarthy's flowery ruminations on fate and morality felt unbearably pretentious when squeezed into the "tighter" running-time, they actually take on a distinct life of their own when given the proper room to breathe and resonate as intended. This film is still more talk than action, but in this longer version the more relaxed pacing makes it clear that we're not watching a crime thriller bogged down in "arty" pomposity, but rather a black-hearted fable about privilege and moral relativism, a poem of existential horror in chic gangster-movie dress. Strict realism does not apply and conventional pulpy thrills are not the end goal. This one's meant to gently ensnare, then snap shut, and linger afterward like a nightmare.
Where the theatrical cut felt compromised by the tension between McCarthy's despairing fatalism and director Ridley Scott's slick aestheticism, the extended edition feels like a much more organic meeting of sensibilities. Their unlikely common ground is perhaps best expressed in a tiny restored subplot, a surreal last-act digression about the fate of two pet cheetahs who, abandoned by their owners, roam suburban Texas.
The film's most notorious scene - Cameron Diaz's femme fatale grinding herself to climax against the windshield of a sports car - still feels tasteless. But now, with the context made clearer, the absurdity of the act and, more importantly, the male narrator's impotent bewilderment in the face of it, shift the focus. Where I felt embarrassed for Diaz in the theatrical cut, she owns that scene in the extended version. It's no longer a scene about how "perverted" she is; it's a scene about how terrified these supposedly empowered men are of women. The constant sex-talk, which once felt like misogyny run amok, now underlines a subtle point: when men categorize women as either Madonna or ****, they unwittingly categorize themselves to the corresponding, subservient role/s of "worshiper" or "customer". It's an irony that eludes these boys (until, of course, it's too late).
There are still some scenes that feel unnecessary. Some of the performances - Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in particular - feel committed but slightly misdirected. And the denial of conventional narrative platitudes, or "likable" characters, may frustrate even some open-minded viewers. It maybe a misfire but, by God, it's a fascinating one: cold, dark, pitiless and quite unlike anything else.
Unlike others, I would say it was a nice movie from Ridley Scott. Certainly not a masterpiece, but I truly enjoyed it. For his capability this movie was a below par, that's what everyone meant. As for the theme of the story, it was a phenomenal, but the screenplay is what failed very badly. To me, some of the scenes in the movie were impressive, enough to stick around the end. As has been a gangster related subject, Midas touch lacks and surprises how a great director make it slip away.
Handling a tough situation, following the instinct and the facing outcome of the final result is what the movie to say in a one liner. Obviously, roles were perfectly distributed to the respective cast by the filmmakers and they had given their best as well. So no blame game for the movie's fall in that matter. In my perception it was the dull moments in the movie that acquire more than the best parts. When it was overhauled to build the story and develop characters, never showed signs of recovery.
As I am a movie maniac, after seeing a movie, I always think of a sequel to follow only if it was a good one, or I pray for no sequel if it was terrible. I thought the same about this movie as well, after seeing the way it ended. I am now curious what if a sequel makes the way and impacts better than this. Because in the history, so many sequels had excelled than the previous movies. Whatever, I respect this film, not because of the director or actors, but like everyone says it should have been little better in a few areas, that's all. A movie fanatic sees the effort and appreciate it even it was not that good, but a critic sees only flaws and criticise as usual.
6/10
Michael Fassbender and Penelope Cruz lead an all-star cast for Cormac McCarthy's screenwriting debut.
Despite its scaldingly hot cast and formidable writer/director combination, The Counselor is simply not a very likable or gratifying film. In fact, it's a bummer. Set mostly within a certain elite, mostly American adjunct to the corrosive Mexican drug trade, Cormac McCarthy's first original screenplay features some trademark bizarre violence and puts some elevated and eloquent words into the mouths of some deeply disreputable figures. The main characters may be twisted but they're not very interesting and, crucially, you can guess, as well as dread, what's coming from very early on. The stars, exotic sex and creative violence will draw an audience looking for classy cheap thrills, but widespread disappointment will yield less impressive box-office numbers than such an illustrious package would ideally generate, at least domestically.
A pretty tasty talk-and-sex scene played by Michael Fassbender and Penelope Cruz within a cocoon of white sheets gets things off to a good start, but there's not much more where that came from in this sordid cautionary tale that warns that this is no country even for beautiful people. It's the sort of queasy yarn in which you just know that the love-struck exchange between Fassbender's Counselor and his beautiful sweetheart -- "I want to love you until I die." "Me first." -- will be turned from a beautiful sentiment into a doom-laden prediction with a short deadline.
Unlike No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers McCarthy adaptation that hit the cinematic jackpot artistically and commercially, there are no cops or otherwise ordinary folks at the center of things here (except perhaps for Cruz's Laura, who is not much seen). Instead, there's a bunch of wealthy weirdos, bright and colorful people who either never had or subsequently discarded the morality gene. Like the pet cheetahs so admired by Cameron Diaz's elaborate and depraved Malkina, who has tattooed her body with leopard-like spots, these people live to hunt and hunt to kill.
The Counselor, who goes by no other name, has clearly done very well over the years with his client Reiner (Javier Bardem), a spiky-haired, big-spirited soul who enjoys a lavishly vulgar lifestyle with Malkina, who sports a ring as big as a **** and lives to push the sexual envelope. Her idea **** time is to go to confession, even though she isn't Catholic, just to outrage the priest with details of her wild activities, which might include an interlude we see of her doing the splits and gyrating on the windshield of Reiner's Bentley while he watches from the seat; she's disappointed when he doesn't get turned on, as he deems the display "too gynecological to be sexy."
The Counselor drives a Bentley too (in fact, the film is embarrassingly overloaded with high-end product placement) and he travels to Amsterdam just to buy Laura an expensive diamond ring, so he's obviously doing just fine. However, despite an explicit warning about the risks from Reiner, the Counselor wants in on a very large upcoming drug deal, probably imagining that he'll retire from the game with Laura thereafter.
Early on, Reiner asks the Counselor if he knows what a bolito is, then describes it as a wind-up wire device that's extremely effective at slicing people's necks. You just know you're going to see this thing in action before it's all over, and it's not the only wire-as-weapon McCarthy and Scott fetishistically employ in the numerous violent passages, so much so that there's actually a character named Wireman.
Also involved as some sort of middleman in the big deal going down is Westray (Brad Pitt), who even more explicitly than Reiner advises the Counselor not to get involved. Inadvertently, however, he gets **** in when he does a favor on the outside for a hard-bitten prisoner (Rosie Perez, very good). Just when it wasn't certain that McCarthy's vision of the world could get much darker, here he explicitly imperils his hero-by-default via the positive action of doing a good deed. Although this is not a mystery story per se, in the end it really becomes an issue of who's going to be the last one standing.
The trouble is, it's no fun -- not even dirty, sordid, delicious fun. This being a Ridley Scott film, the images are always fabulous to behold , but here they are employed mainly to show off the lifestyle -- locations, vehicles, clothes, jewelry, makeup, haircuts; it's a like two-hour commercial for a no-limit credit card.
As far as dazzling villains are concerned, the third time is not the charm for Bardem, after his unforgettable turns in No Country for Old Men and Skyfall.
What one is left with is a very bleak ending and an only slightly less depressing sense of the waste of a lot of fine talent both behind and in front of the camera.
A beautiful bummer.
This movie was the most surprisingly, disappointed movie i've ever watch in 2013. With the A list casts and their actings, they can't help how mess this movie's plot. Really disappointed
Production Company
Fox 2000 Pictures,
Scott Free Productions,
Nick Wechsler Productions,
Chockstone Pictures,
TSG Entertainment,
Ingenious Media,
Big Screen Productions,
Event Film Cars,
Kanzaman,
Translux