The dialog itself is sharp, cryptic and original, I loved hearing the characters' philosophical banter about death, religion, sex, acceptance etc. With Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem. The Counselor achieves the almost unheard-of daily double of giving us the most outrageous sex scene of the year AND the most unforgettably brutal murder of the year. Ridley Scott does a superb job of capturing the essence of McCarthys screenplay, make up your own mind as there are too many negative reviews. 10/10. Tag Archive: The Counselor – Movie Review. Movie Review: The Counselor. Click here to see the video. Through thematic contrivance is created a jungle filled with various inhabitants. The Counselor – Movie Review. The Counselor focuses on the Counselor (Michael Fassbender) and his business dealings after he becomes engaged to Laura (Penelope Cruz). I'll start with the positives because there actually is plenty to like in this movie. In the beginning, the counselor finds himself in a situation, where he is not exactly short for cash, but needs more to buy a diamond. Brutal, meditative, and smart. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Rosie Perez. With things going smoothly in his life, the Counselor tries to make some money on the side by getting himself mixed in with drug trafficking and opening a club with his friend, Reiner (Javier Bardem). How could this be? some of the obvious foreshadows have great pay offs, and C.) knowing what's to come and watching anyways has a sort of knowing dread about it. Read full review Ridley Scott you are a true artist. Being a successful businessman and criminal, Reiner is mixed up in a confusing sexual relationship with Malkina (Cameron Diaz) who ultimately has ulterior motives from standing by Reiner's side. I was overwhelmed by the lack of structure, incoherence of plot and sheer pomposity of the characters. Watching on a mobile? The Counselor had all the makings of a fine dramatic thriller, great cast, fine director, interesting premise, yet the result is underwhelming. The acting first and foremost is phenomenal, particularly Fassbender and Bardem. With three of his novels being adapted into critically acclaimed films, Cormac McCarthy has opted to try his hand at screen writing, and the fruits of his labor can be seen in The Counselor. Drowns under the weight of cryptic dialogue and abstract storytelling. I'm fairly certain if you liked No Country for Old Men the style won't be all that different to you, since it is written by Cormac McCarthy like the source material for that one was, except The Counselor was personally written by his hand alone. The Counsellor is easily one of the biggest disappointments in film all year. Michael Fassbender stars in The Counselor as the titular protagonist, a prominent lawyer who makes the life-turning decision to enter the underworld of high-end drug trafficking. Really. I don't see this as a complaint, since A.) The action may be fast as a pingball, but the high-calibre cast can't stop Ridley Scott's latest from running out of ping But what impressed me most is the moral decay and corruption of human beings, the ruthless jungle surviving rules. This idea is brilliantly delivered near the end by Ruben Blades. This is my first review in IMDb. Awards The Counselor Review. Fassbender does his best to hold it all together, chewing a toothpick to unconvincingly hardboiled effect before descending into snot-bubbling desperation and grief. | Highly recommended. I am confident that most viewers did not like this film because of the complex plot and incredible dialogue. Google+. I have not watched any for this and probably for the better. Email * Interests. Metacritic Reviews. In addition, it appears to be a crime thriller, which definitely commences my adrenaline rush because it's personally my favorite genre. FAQ Perhaps because of the origins of the script, from the hand of McCarthy, a literary master. One of the most promising movies this year. It is, one could say, Ridley Scott's first fable (yes, Legend notwithstanding). What follows is the punishment for this decision, that cannot be changed or compromised with. The National Security Counselor. Pinterest. I admit that he has made some masterpieces such as Alien and some great films such as Thelma & Louise, Black Hawk Down, and American Gangster. It's the only reason you care about anything that's happening. I was recently watching a Tennessee Williams play adapted for the screen by Kazan, and I could feel the weight of its literary origins. Don't believe the bad reviews here: If you love intelligent, really dark gangster movies, this is definitely one to see. Despite the bad ratings, it's probably the best allegorical films about greed and justice. The Counselor is more like a two-hour Fassbender audio book than a conventional drama. Ridley Scott's The Counselor is definitely a movie worth seeing. Cameron Diaz was good. Written by Cormac McCarthy. The Counselor is a verbose, overstuffed, yet disastrously terrific work from Ridley Scott. Although he is constantly told that things could go wrong and the effects would be irreversible, his greed cannot let him decline. But now I know. The Counselor, like previous McCarthy adaptations, is gorgeous to behold, but unlike No Country and the others, this one is unnervingly bright, lensed in iridescent yellows and grungy grim tones. The Counselor: A Shakespearean tragedy of greed and desperation. There is enough blood and perversion to keep you smiling, but the weight of its humanity will grip your soul. 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 Counselor is a 2013 crime thriller film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Cormac McCarthy.It stars Michael Fassbender as the eponymous Counselor as well as Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt.The film deals with themes such as greed, mortality, love, and trust in the context of the Mexican drug trade. The "average movie-goer" probably enjoys toilet humor, sophomoric dialog, and endless, often pointless action scenes piled one on top of the next, ad nauseam. Full Review | Original Score: F Brian D. Johnson Maclean's Magazine 2. Amazing cinematography. Peopled with the kind of endlessly soliloquising drug dealers whom even Quentin Tarantino would give a wide berth, The Counsellor gets an A-list cast to recite B-movie dialogue with C-minus results. People are punished and rewarded regardless of their actions and the main character just happened to get his punishment at that point. It's a depiction of the life of rich and beautiful, not a life story of an office worker. Anyways, I've read a couple reviews offering it high praise and a lot of them completely bashing it, I'm somewhere in the middle but leaning more toward the former positive critique. real people get involved in this stuff knowing bad things can happen despite all the warnings heard ahead of time and B.) Directed by Ridley Scott, starring Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz. 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. The movie was sloppily made, confusing, poorly written, uninteresting, and boring. The Counsellor – review 2 / 5 stars 2 out of 5 stars. Went and saw The Counselor tonight. Ever since it came out I was intrigued how it got very mixed reviews when it had such an amazing cast and crew. Having long failed to bring Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian to the screen ("it would have been rated double-X"), Ridley Scott settles for second prize with this self-consciously overcooked existential thriller in which McCarthy proves that while he may be a matchless author, screenwriting is not his forte. In his crime thriller No Country for Old Men, … The Counselor proves that talented people can produce a horrendous mess. Twitter. | It opens with Michael Fassbender and Penelope Cruz in bed together after what is supposed to be a marathon lovemaking session, but director Ridley Scott films the first part of this scene so that they are totally covered by white sheets, as if they were mummies. Anyway I have confidence this film will be remembered in later decades. With a star studded cast, featuring the likes of Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt, and directed by Ridley Scott, with a script from one of the greatest American novelists alive, Cormac McCarthy, obviously I went to see "The Counselor" on face value alone. Twitter. And the only reason I write this review is that I think this film is underrated too badly. Just to sum up this is a brilliant movie and worth seeing on the fly. It disarms you from the beginning with the extensive normality in it's engaging dialogue, it's interesting characters and even humor, especially one scene involving a Ferrari. /. Much time is taken up discussing the nature of evil in a manner so datedly naff that when snuff movies rear their ridiculous head you find yourself longing for the Nietzschean heft of Nic Cage in Joel Schumacher's 8mm. Michael Fassbender is the nameless straight who makes a once-only decision to get into bed with a Mexican drug-trafficking cartel and spends the rest of the movie regretting it. The film may be judged upon different merits. I was really angry during the movie and became angrier when I thought about the sheer waste of so much talent. Its relentlessly depressing plot is likely to turn off audiences. | Apparently I am one of the few who came into this movie with no pre- conceived ideas of what it would actually be like. 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. 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 actually hadn't heard of The Counselor before a friend invited me to see it, so I just quickly checked the one sentence synopsis at the top of the page on IMDb. This was how I felt watching TC. I've read reviews complaining its too predictable but I feel like that's the point, as it involves a relatively "good man" getting in bed with a drug cartel and everyone kind of tells him to be sure that he understands, that bad things could/will happen. The Counselor is filled with mostly bad people doing really bad things. The Counselor is so in love with itself that it gives no one else a reason to love it, let alone care. Facebook. This is a badass journey from start to finish. All the actors give probably one of their best performances in their roles and Scott's direction is fantastic as always. 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. One of the biggest disappointments of the year. It is a slow moving film, with lots of dialogue, and every character seems to get a lengthy monologue. This is the underlying message of The Counselor, an intense crime thriller directed by Ridley Scott, and featuring an original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy. I'll tell ya, its the only way to go. … Release Date: October 25, 2013 Director: Ridley Scott MPAA Rating: R Film Pulse Score: 3/10 Ridley Scott has had a varied career. I like the plot, the direction, the action sequence, the screen play of this film. Literally. The Counselor is one of the most bizarre movies I've ever seen. So why did it fail so miserably? Ridley Scott’s The Counselor is not quite what you might expect it to be. A lawyer finds himself in over his head when he gets involved in drug trafficking. Unfortunately their project, The Counselor, lacks all of the wonder that has gained them respect in the film industry. Jonathan Stevenson, ... Best of The New York Review, plus books, events, and other items of interest. 'The Counselor' is like a road-map through Hell, if Hell looked like Juarez, moved like Cameron Diaz, and smelled like Javier Bardem's hair gel. But, if you're patient enough to stay with this film until the second hour, you will be rewarded by witnessing how McCarthy and Scott weave this almost action-less tale together, quietly guiding audiences into a brilliantly disturbing and hypnotic finale. I ain't kidding. I'm no youngster but anyone who thinks that a novelist can START writing screenplays at 80 needs to think again. The Counselor held a great deal of promise. After getting his fair share of praise and love (justifiably so) for his achievements as a novelist, Cormac McCarthy's first-ever film script is laughably bad and a total embarrassment. The Counselor is a hard film to recommend. October 25, 2013. At first glance, it seems as if it's impossible for The Counselor to be proved a disappointment from the looks of its amazing cast (the likes of Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, Brad Pitt, and Penelope Cruz), exceptional director with a credible resume, and a totally prestigious author signed on for his first screenplay. 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. (See Mr. Welles, not Mr. An A-list cast recite B-movie dialogue in Ridley Scott's disappointing collaboration with Cormac McCarthy. On the outside it looks like a thriller, and it does have the set up of a good thriller, but its more just a dark brooding and sometimes darkly humorous drama that has thriller like moments. I have watched a lot of movies since I last posted, I just have not had enough time to write the reviews (it takes a while even though they are only a few paragraphs long). Most of the criticism is directed towards unreal dialog, yet they forget the fact that the movies is not about people like them. With the club being funded by Westray (Brad Pitt), things for the Counselor could not be better, that is until one of his clients, Ruth (Rosie Perez), calls the Counselor from jail, and asks him to get her son released from jail over a speeding ticket. All spiced up with brief interludes of U-for-unclassified excess featuring robotic garrotes, high-speed decapitations and Cameron Diaz having sex with a windscreen while Javier Bardem compares her genitals to the mouth of a scum-sucking catfish. I loved Heli, and I loved the Counsellor, this is why. Normally, I fully appreciate bleak films with utterly despicable characters that leave you thinking rather than leaving the theater with a smile on your face, joyous to the fact that the hero saved the day yet again. Highly underrated gem but apparently only if you are a film fan with a IQ above 70. When the names Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy are connected to a project, one can't help but visualize the noir visual poetry of Scott's Blade Runner and think of the harsh, grim storytelling excellence of Cormac McCarthy. But where the movie really stands out (and really how movies should be first judged) is in the script. The Counselor Review. Google+. While there are some worthwhile themes at play here (like visceral evidence that the wages of sin is death, a topic we’ll deal with more in the conclusion), it doesn’t contain much that you specifically point to … reviewer gave the film her highest marks whereas others viewed the film as being sub par or even disastrous. The movie’s title may make cruel sense — the Counselor is a man who himself takes no counsel — but a truer encapsulation of its worldview is “No Exit.” “The Counselor” is rated R … 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. 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. When I first heard about this film and its pedigreed credentials: Director Ridley Scott, Starring Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt, I was excited to see it. While the script piddles endlessly around the cod-philosophical implications of living with bad choices, the stars are left to outdo each other in the shocking wardrobe department; Bardem's vomit-hued shirt offsetting a permatan face and Milo from Tweenies spikey 'fro; Brad Pitt as the Midnight Cowboy's stetson-sporting brother from another mullet; Diaz dressed as a cheetah (she gets to do a long speech about what it "means" to be a cheetah). That is to say the first act and a half is far too cryptic for its own good, with dialogue that is in love with its own double entendres and lines which sound as though they would be more at home in a novel than spoken aloud by human beings. Some lines of dialogue are powerful. Ridley Scott‘s latest disaster of a film, The Counselor, is a real nasty piece of work. Posted by Bethany Lewis | Oct 28, 2013 | Film Reviews | 1 | Directed by Ridley Scott Written by Cormac McCarthy. Film Review: ‘The Counselor’ Cormac McCarthy's first original script is nearly all dialogue, but it’s a lousy story, ineptly constructed and rendered far too difficult to follow. I never saw any trailers or reviews and just had the briefest of description of the story. 10/10. The film doesn’t temper enough of Cormac McCarthy’s excesses, but Ridley Scott and his ensemble find enough meat in the scenario to make for diverting, bloody pleasure. Absolutely underrated Ridley Scott's film. Directed by Ridley Scott, the film stars Michael Fassbender as a high-priced lawyer who decides to dabble in something a bit less than legal in order to make some extra cash. The simple yet tragic story however is muffled by the heavy abstract dialog, which seems to be trying to be as far from expository as possible. Several scenes of dialogue rivals Robert Shaw's Indianapolis speech in Jaws. The surprise of the year. A Kafkaesque punishment, that doesn't care whether it's your first time, you had good intentions or it was going to be a one time thing. Spielberg.). On the other hand, if you are among the diminishing number of movie-goers who actually enjoys deeply portentous dialog (this is a GOOD thing), first-rate acting, and a story line leading to a denouement that that will leave you wanting to see this film again and again, then this is a film for you.