The Counselor

Review - I find it extremely difficult to recommend that anyone even watch this film. I find it, at least, a plausible idea to make the film if it had been done 10 or 20 years ago. I think if it’d been made then there would have been a better chance of some characterization. As it stands now, the film is chock full of bad things happening to people you never know nor care about.

Ridley Scott is one hell of a director and this is one hell of a horrible movie. It looks good and the people are pretty but both of those things play out like special effects trying to mask a badly scripted and constructed film. The resident plot points are made but seemingly without any life behind them.

The script, written by first time screenwriter Cormac McCarthy is awash in cold, isolated, and heartless scenes. Seemingly pointless they play out until the final act when suddenly a series of finales are enacted to the vocal reciting of poignant existential theories. This itself seems completely out of place, even preachy, in its overtness. Truly, by this point you’ve not only lost me, as an audience, but have kept me from ever caring.

Ultimately “The Counselor” is to be considered as an all around waste of talent. Despite my affection for the persons involved, in front of and behind the camera, the film just smacks of pomposity and ill concern for its audience. The film is not a let down so much as an undeserving and boring professional testimony.

-m-