Disappointing. I expected more from a movie with such cast.
I was hopefull to see at least a good movie. Buuut, more or less in the middle of the movie, i caught asking to myself "what's the point?" and i still don't know. There is something wrong with the characters and some of that long dialogs parts.
The best in this movie are the references to Breaking Bad.
The grimmest failure of this or any film is when it could easily be mistaken as a parody of its intentions. Ironically parodies may be the opposite, but that's a topic for another day. This is easily the best criticism I could make, that McCarthy accidentally parodied his own work.
Ridley Scott tries to bring The Departed style to a Breaking Bad storyline. In theory, this seems like a great idea, but it falls way short in execution. I think a lot of this has to do with casting Fassbender as the lead, where his acting fails to induce any catharthis. Ultimately, the movie doesn't establish any connection with its audience, leading to complete disinterest in the resolution. Style over substance.
Cormac McCarthy's bleak vision of a dog bites dog world is perfectly captured in the Counsellor, his first original film script. The intractable forces of evil that come to play once a border has been crossed or trespassed are portrayed essentially as the flip side of normality with each main character in the film having to take a stand. Dialogue driven (with brilliantly written repartees) not unlike the best film noirs, memorable characters and performances, tightly structured and abetted by a lean, controlled and efficient direction by Ridley Scott who has arisen from his, years on, directorial slumber in order to serve brilliantly Cormac McCarthy's morality tale.
The relentlessly dark vision of the movie will understandably put most people off since it makes very few concessions to the mainstream sensibilities (identifiable, likeable characters, literal explanations, emotional catharsis), but Cormac McCarthy prose was never suitable for all. This film is destined to become a cult classic with time and one of Ridley Scott's primary accomplishments in his long and patchy career.
"A man would give entire nations to lift grief off his heart and yet, you cannot buy anything with grief, because grief is worthless."
This is a difficult movie to rate. I have mixed feelings about it. The first part is terribly tedious and boring. A series of hugely pretentious dialogues and incomprehensible philosophical reasoning. It is a montage of various fragmentary issues that make it difficult to sense the vibe of the movie and to understand what it's about. Also there are subjects used that were completely beside the point in my eyes (the erotic beginning for starters). Also the total absence of any explanation of how they ended up in this situation, makes it uneasy to follow the storyline.
Ridley Scott, of course known for his masterpieces "Blade Runner" and "Alien",didn't succeed in keeping up the momentum. You first need to endure a full hour to finally realize what the contents of the movie is and after that you can enjoy a rough settlement by the drug cartel. And that's the double feeling about this film. The first part gets a unsatisfactory grade. The second part is the counterbalance.
In terms of characters Brad Pitt tops them all. A savvy person with a reserved and confident attitude that apparently has everything well organized. When something starts to go wrong, he can disappear instantly and retire for the rest of his life. His white suit and Stetson on his long hair gives him a dignified appearance and a rebellious appearance at the same time. Michael Fassbender as "The Counselor" was convincing as a lawyer , but what the hell is he doing among those criminals ? He looks like a choirboy who will start to cry when slapped in his face. This is also something that is not really clear . How did he end up with the drug lord Reiner ? Is he also a kind of counselor as Tom Hagan in "The Godfather" ? I don't think so. He would earn enough money and wouldn't be involved in the drug deal that ultimately will bring him down. Money problems perhaps ? I don't think so either since he can travel all the way to Amsterdam to choose a diamond.
Javier Bardem was also brilliant as the eccentric Reiner. He looked just like a tanned Tom Jones. Cruz played only a minor role and she was just a religious prude naive woman who was constantly upset by the others. The only one I hated instantly, was Cameron Diaz. She is as hot as a typical non-functional oven and she's clearly getting older resulting in slight hanging skin at some places. Besides the fact that she plays a dual role in a sly way, she tries to shock sexually, with as highlight the sticky wet routine on the windshield of Reiner's car.
The story on its own is dead simple and it doesn't need 2 hours to be told. It took so miserable long because of the dialogues as mentioned earlier . It was terribly annoying after a while . Even with subtitles in English , it didn't make any sense to me sometimes. Everybody seemed like having an academically degree in languages. It seemed as if they had to transform every dialogue into an anthology of an intellectual high level with a lot of difficult words. Even the drug baron Reiner and someone from the drug cartel used those intricate descriptions. They sound so philosophical that I doubt they could understand themselves. A fragment of the Dutch diamond expert sounds as follows : "To partake of the stone's endless destiny, is that not the meaning of adornment? To enhance the beauty of the beloved is to acknowledge both her frailty and the nobility of that frailty. At our noblest, we announce to the darkness that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives.". Even after reading it three times again, i still can't understand the deeper meaning .
The most impressive scene was the liquidation of Brad Pitt. It was filmed fairly explicit and gruesome. The best dialogue was between Pitt and Fassbender about Snuff movies. The funniest thing was the fact that they twice used a joke that's often told here amongst friends. The one the motorcyclist told about the dog food. The second about the Pope in Mexico. Funny to experience that.
Final conclusion: an intricate dead boring first hour as a precursor to a quite impressive offensive end. Ultimately, on average, it is still not sufficient.
Despite all the star actors (some of which I really love) this isn't quite my movie. It had its moments, some cool thoughts and ideas but overall it was just a little pointless. At least that's the feeling that lingered.
What a cast!!!! Movie looks amazing but ........so incoherent and boring with dialogue that's just weird. Who talks like that. Not bad just very dissapointing.
One of the crappiest movies i ever saw. They only put the action in the trailer. Most of the movie they were just talking. They didn't explain who or why these character showed up in the story, which is hard to tell what is going on. The character "Counselor" is talking to some random guy on the phone towards the end of the movie. Its just pops him up talking to him but we have no clue who he is while watching the movie. Worst movie, not even worth re-watching it.
Earlier last year I wrote about how excited I was that this film was even happening. The cast, aside from Cameron Diaz, was fantastic. I am a Ridley Scott apologist. I thought “Prometheus” was a gorgeous film and although it was written by a man who should have no business in science fiction, I thought the film did space horror justice. The film boasted one of my favorite authors at the helm of the screenplay. I have enjoyed everything Cormac McCarthy has ever written and was excited for his first work written directly for the screen. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG GUYS?
Everything. Everything went wrong.
This was one of the most pretentious pieces of hot garbage I have ever seen. It was like Ridley Scott found a pile of shit in the middle of the room, found out who made it, denied it was a pile of shit, and threw glitter on it. How is that image doing for you? I’m actually proud of that analogy. It is fitting to what this film ended up being. So we have a lawyer played by Michael fucking Fassbender. This lawyer decides to get into the drug trade and then I honestly don’t understand what the hell happens next. Actually, if I had not read the synopsis before watching the film I would have had no idea what was happening during the entire two hour run length. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy films that make no sense. Those films however know what they’re aiming for and try to present it in a unique and experimental fashion. This films plays like McCarthy watched a Tarantino film and decided he was going to write one and use much bigger words. I love the mans writing but this was just a huge failure in trying to be profound and philosophical. NOBODY TALKS THE WAY ANYBODY IN THIS FILM TALKS. The last line was spoken by Cameron Diaz and she used the word “famished”. She wasn’t even being ironic. It was like a high school drama student was trying to sound cool on facebook. I’m just completely surprised by how bad the entire film was.
That isn’t to say there weren’t a few stylish elements I enjoyed. For one, Ridley Scott is just a natural behind teh camera and I enjoyed the colors portrayed in the film. There are also two very entertaining scenes that involve wire and Cameron Diaz fucking a car.
Yes. I just said that. I’m sorry if I ruined it for you but there is no way in hell I’m not talking about this. Cameron Diaz fucked an automobile. The term “catfish” was used in the film to describe what such an experience would be like. I vomited in my bed. Cameron Diaz owes me new sheets.
Let’s elaborate on Cameron Diaz for a moment. Why was she cast in this film. Her character is supposed to be ARGENTINIAN. Does she look Argentinian? Does she sound even remotely Argentinian? That must have been one hell of a blow job she gave to the casting director because that’s the only way that untalented woman got this job. Actually, that could probably be said for most of her career. I’m so glad that she didn’t end up doing what she always ends up doing, ruining good films. Her involvement in this was just an extra piece of lunacy added on to a debacle of a movie. Penelope Cruz was underused and had horrible lines given to her which she delivered with a subtle hint of “am I really saying this?” Javier Bardem decided to do this just so he could have his hair styled like that. I have know idea what he said in the film because of his outrageous blow out haircut. Brad Pitt played the same character he always plays, in the same voice, with the same everything.
Why did this have to happen. It was like the entire production company set us up for something brilliant and then delivered us a failure pile with a party hat on it and a note saying “Suck it population!”. I feel bad for people who paid to see this.
Let me summarize this who thing before I write Netflix a letter asking them why they didn’t email saying “NO PLEASE DON’T” when they saw I had this movie in my queue. The film was a mechanical pretentious slob of pseudo philosophical drivel. That sentence was brought to you by the Thesaurus. The same thesaurus that Cormac McCarthy used to construct 90% of the dialogue in this film. It had a few entertaining scenes. I believe a mentioned a car being slobbered on by an old untalented vagina. It was not entertaining enough though to hold even the slightest of my attention and I would like my two hours back. Oh, an there were Cheetahs in this films that were treated like both horses and house cats. I feel violated.
The movie takes a good performance by Fassbander and a few iconic scenes (Diaz "riding" the car, the bike vs wire scene) but wastes it on a story that shows you less than it could and relies too much on boring dialogue (like every word spoken by Barden and Pitt)
A saddening bore. Nothing surprising, nothing interesting, bad lines combined with way too pretentious lines for that movie... Not even that all star cast could do something about it. I went to see it for free, still too expensive :(
Good things: costumes,
and fortunately no happy end
.
Money and sex... could be interesting, watch "Liebe Paradis"
This film had bad marketing. They aimed for the wrong audience for the wrong reasons. This film's pessimistic tone, moral self righteous attitude, unlikeable charecters, eccentric cheesy lines, and a shocking scene with a ferrai without doubt will register it in Cult history.
Brad Pitt's death scene is legendary, very menacing and very horrifing. Very McCarthy-ish. A film where the bad guys win and then you realize that there never was any good guys
Ridley's direction was similar to the direction he had in Body of Lies.
I do agree, there was a lack of thrills and suspense however that would a negative thing if the film's approach was towards blockbuster, typical drug deal gone wrong film however that was not the case. McCarthy chose to explore consequences and moral issues. He had flaws in his scrip, true, but I wouldn't go as far as to call the film a bad movie, I merley think that McCarthy will soon reach his full potential as a screenwriter if this film's box office doesn't discourage him. The film may be slow and boring in the first hour to some however it's not if you just let the atmosphere sink in, for that's the point if the first half of the film.
Fassbender was terrific, especially his acting near the end. Great death scenes. Time will look at this one kinder in the future. Now this film was not the greatest of the year but it surely is defintley not the worst.
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Comments 1 - 15 of 19
Youssef Y.
Disappointing. I expected more from a movie with such cast.I was hopefull to see at least a good movie. Buuut, more or less in the middle of the movie, i caught asking to myself "what's the point?" and i still don't know. There is something wrong with the characters and some of that long dialogs parts.
The best in this movie are the references to Breaking Bad.
Kenneth McMahon
Scott. McCarthy. Fassbender. Bardem. Cruz. Pitt. Diaz. Disappointment.darth_nevets
The grimmest failure of this or any film is when it could easily be mistaken as a parody of its intentions. Ironically parodies may be the opposite, but that's a topic for another day. This is easily the best criticism I could make, that McCarthy accidentally parodied his own work.Unfortunate Synopsis
Ridley Scott tries to bring The Departed style to a Breaking Bad storyline. In theory, this seems like a great idea, but it falls way short in execution. I think a lot of this has to do with casting Fassbender as the lead, where his acting fails to induce any catharthis. Ultimately, the movie doesn't establish any connection with its audience, leading to complete disinterest in the resolution. Style over substance.mpouk
Cormac McCarthy's bleak vision of a dog bites dog world is perfectly captured in the Counsellor, his first original film script. The intractable forces of evil that come to play once a border has been crossed or trespassed are portrayed essentially as the flip side of normality with each main character in the film having to take a stand. Dialogue driven (with brilliantly written repartees) not unlike the best film noirs, memorable characters and performances, tightly structured and abetted by a lean, controlled and efficient direction by Ridley Scott who has arisen from his, years on, directorial slumber in order to serve brilliantly Cormac McCarthy's morality tale.The relentlessly dark vision of the movie will understandably put most people off since it makes very few concessions to the mainstream sensibilities (identifiable, likeable characters, literal explanations, emotional catharsis), but Cormac McCarthy prose was never suitable for all. This film is destined to become a cult classic with time and one of Ridley Scott's primary accomplishments in his long and patchy career.
ikkegoemikke
"A man would give entire nations to lift grief off his heart and yet, you cannot buy anything with grief, because grief is worthless."This is a difficult movie to rate. I have mixed feelings about it. The first part is terribly tedious and boring. A series of hugely pretentious dialogues and incomprehensible philosophical reasoning. It is a montage of various fragmentary issues that make it difficult to sense the vibe of the movie and to understand what it's about. Also there are subjects used that were completely beside the point in my eyes (the erotic beginning for starters). Also the total absence of any explanation of how they ended up in this situation, makes it uneasy to follow the storyline.
Ridley Scott, of course known for his masterpieces "Blade Runner" and "Alien",didn't succeed in keeping up the momentum. You first need to endure a full hour to finally realize what the contents of the movie is and after that you can enjoy a rough settlement by the drug cartel. And that's the double feeling about this film. The first part gets a unsatisfactory grade. The second part is the counterbalance.
In terms of characters Brad Pitt tops them all. A savvy person with a reserved and confident attitude that apparently has everything well organized. When something starts to go wrong, he can disappear instantly and retire for the rest of his life. His white suit and Stetson on his long hair gives him a dignified appearance and a rebellious appearance at the same time. Michael Fassbender as "The Counselor" was convincing as a lawyer , but what the hell is he doing among those criminals ? He looks like a choirboy who will start to cry when slapped in his face. This is also something that is not really clear . How did he end up with the drug lord Reiner ? Is he also a kind of counselor as Tom Hagan in "The Godfather" ? I don't think so. He would earn enough money and wouldn't be involved in the drug deal that ultimately will bring him down. Money problems perhaps ? I don't think so either since he can travel all the way to Amsterdam to choose a diamond.
Javier Bardem was also brilliant as the eccentric Reiner. He looked just like a tanned Tom Jones. Cruz played only a minor role and she was just a religious prude naive woman who was constantly upset by the others. The only one I hated instantly, was Cameron Diaz. She is as hot as a typical non-functional oven and she's clearly getting older resulting in slight hanging skin at some places. Besides the fact that she plays a dual role in a sly way, she tries to shock sexually, with as highlight the sticky wet routine on the windshield of Reiner's car.
The story on its own is dead simple and it doesn't need 2 hours to be told. It took so miserable long because of the dialogues as mentioned earlier . It was terribly annoying after a while . Even with subtitles in English , it didn't make any sense to me sometimes. Everybody seemed like having an academically degree in languages. It seemed as if they had to transform every dialogue into an anthology of an intellectual high level with a lot of difficult words. Even the drug baron Reiner and someone from the drug cartel used those intricate descriptions. They sound so philosophical that I doubt they could understand themselves. A fragment of the Dutch diamond expert sounds as follows : "To partake of the stone's endless destiny, is that not the meaning of adornment? To enhance the beauty of the beloved is to acknowledge both her frailty and the nobility of that frailty. At our noblest, we announce to the darkness that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives.". Even after reading it three times again, i still can't understand the deeper meaning .
The most impressive scene was the liquidation of Brad Pitt. It was filmed fairly explicit and gruesome. The best dialogue was between Pitt and Fassbender about Snuff movies. The funniest thing was the fact that they twice used a joke that's often told here amongst friends. The one the motorcyclist told about the dog food. The second about the Pope in Mexico. Funny to experience that.
Final conclusion: an intricate dead boring first hour as a precursor to a quite impressive offensive end. Ultimately, on average, it is still not sufficient.
More reviews here : http://bit.ly/2qtGQoc
IreneAdler
Despite all the star actors (some of which I really love) this isn't quite my movie. It had its moments, some cool thoughts and ideas but overall it was just a little pointless. At least that's the feeling that lingered.Earring72
What a cast!!!! Movie looks amazing but ........so incoherent and boring with dialogue that's just weird. Who talks like that. Not bad just very dissapointing.allisoncm
Woof. 3/10Fuzzy
One of the crappiest movies i ever saw. They only put the action in the trailer. Most of the movie they were just talking. They didn't explain who or why these character showed up in the story, which is hard to tell what is going on. The character "Counselor" is talking to some random guy on the phone towards the end of the movie. Its just pops him up talking to him but we have no clue who he is while watching the movie. Worst movie, not even worth re-watching it.The_Comatorium
Earlier last year I wrote about how excited I was that this film was even happening. The cast, aside from Cameron Diaz, was fantastic. I am a Ridley Scott apologist. I thought “Prometheus” was a gorgeous film and although it was written by a man who should have no business in science fiction, I thought the film did space horror justice. The film boasted one of my favorite authors at the helm of the screenplay. I have enjoyed everything Cormac McCarthy has ever written and was excited for his first work written directly for the screen. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG GUYS?Everything. Everything went wrong.
This was one of the most pretentious pieces of hot garbage I have ever seen. It was like Ridley Scott found a pile of shit in the middle of the room, found out who made it, denied it was a pile of shit, and threw glitter on it. How is that image doing for you? I’m actually proud of that analogy. It is fitting to what this film ended up being. So we have a lawyer played by Michael fucking Fassbender. This lawyer decides to get into the drug trade and then I honestly don’t understand what the hell happens next. Actually, if I had not read the synopsis before watching the film I would have had no idea what was happening during the entire two hour run length. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy films that make no sense. Those films however know what they’re aiming for and try to present it in a unique and experimental fashion. This films plays like McCarthy watched a Tarantino film and decided he was going to write one and use much bigger words. I love the mans writing but this was just a huge failure in trying to be profound and philosophical. NOBODY TALKS THE WAY ANYBODY IN THIS FILM TALKS. The last line was spoken by Cameron Diaz and she used the word “famished”. She wasn’t even being ironic. It was like a high school drama student was trying to sound cool on facebook. I’m just completely surprised by how bad the entire film was.
That isn’t to say there weren’t a few stylish elements I enjoyed. For one, Ridley Scott is just a natural behind teh camera and I enjoyed the colors portrayed in the film. There are also two very entertaining scenes that involve wire and Cameron Diaz fucking a car.
Yes. I just said that. I’m sorry if I ruined it for you but there is no way in hell I’m not talking about this. Cameron Diaz fucked an automobile. The term “catfish” was used in the film to describe what such an experience would be like. I vomited in my bed. Cameron Diaz owes me new sheets.
Let’s elaborate on Cameron Diaz for a moment. Why was she cast in this film. Her character is supposed to be ARGENTINIAN. Does she look Argentinian? Does she sound even remotely Argentinian? That must have been one hell of a blow job she gave to the casting director because that’s the only way that untalented woman got this job. Actually, that could probably be said for most of her career. I’m so glad that she didn’t end up doing what she always ends up doing, ruining good films. Her involvement in this was just an extra piece of lunacy added on to a debacle of a movie. Penelope Cruz was underused and had horrible lines given to her which she delivered with a subtle hint of “am I really saying this?” Javier Bardem decided to do this just so he could have his hair styled like that. I have know idea what he said in the film because of his outrageous blow out haircut. Brad Pitt played the same character he always plays, in the same voice, with the same everything.
Why did this have to happen. It was like the entire production company set us up for something brilliant and then delivered us a failure pile with a party hat on it and a note saying “Suck it population!”. I feel bad for people who paid to see this.
Let me summarize this who thing before I write Netflix a letter asking them why they didn’t email saying “NO PLEASE DON’T” when they saw I had this movie in my queue. The film was a mechanical pretentious slob of pseudo philosophical drivel. That sentence was brought to you by the Thesaurus. The same thesaurus that Cormac McCarthy used to construct 90% of the dialogue in this film. It had a few entertaining scenes. I believe a mentioned a car being slobbered on by an old untalented vagina. It was not entertaining enough though to hold even the slightest of my attention and I would like my two hours back. Oh, an there were Cheetahs in this films that were treated like both horses and house cats. I feel violated.
0.5/5
http://thoughtsfromthebooth.com/2014/03/14/film-review-the-counselor-2013/
stexdo
The movie takes a good performance by Fassbander and a few iconic scenes (Diaz "riding" the car, the bike vs wire scene) but wastes it on a story that shows you less than it could and relies too much on boring dialogue (like every word spoken by Barden and Pitt)BarryAllen
@mpoukHe wrote 2 screenplays before this.
Lumen
A saddening bore. Nothing surprising, nothing interesting, bad lines combined with way too pretentious lines for that movie... Not even that all star cast could do something about it. I went to see it for free, still too expensive :(Good things: costumes,
Money and sex... could be interesting, watch "Liebe Paradis"
V012
This film had bad marketing. They aimed for the wrong audience for the wrong reasons. This film's pessimistic tone, moral self righteous attitude, unlikeable charecters, eccentric cheesy lines, and a shocking scene with a ferrai without doubt will register it in Cult history.I do agree, there was a lack of thrills and suspense however that would a negative thing if the film's approach was towards blockbuster, typical drug deal gone wrong film however that was not the case. McCarthy chose to explore consequences and moral issues. He had flaws in his scrip, true, but I wouldn't go as far as to call the film a bad movie, I merley think that McCarthy will soon reach his full potential as a screenwriter if this film's box office doesn't discourage him. The film may be slow and boring in the first hour to some however it's not if you just let the atmosphere sink in, for that's the point if the first half of the film.
Fassbender was terrific, especially his acting near the end. Great death scenes. Time will look at this one kinder in the future. Now this film was not the greatest of the year but it surely is defintley not the worst.
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