“On paper, everything about The Counselor should have been great. Pretty people running something in the seedy drug underworld. Ridley Scott at the helm. Ridiculously incredible cast including Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Cameron Diaz. And the debut screenplay by acclaimed novelist Cormac McCarthy. And yet, something went horribly horribly wrong.
I really hate to bring the blame down on someone with a Pulitzer, but I really do think the biggest weaknesses were in the screenplay. It was just one big hot mess that looked pretty on the surface but was confusing as all \m/ when you dug in deeper. There were long conversations that sounded cool, but didn’t mean anything. Seemingly clever quirks that came off as pretentious. And did anyone else get the sense that there was just a whole chunk that was removed from the middle? Because there were some definite jumps from point A to point C without ever showing B. Maybe they just realized it was too much and no one would notice or be any less confused if it was gone. I’d hoped maybe at the end there would be some Ocean’s style plot unpacking that would straighten things out, but nope. I’m not quite sure who was behind what part of the drug operation and why it was so convoluted or how it was so quick to come back to the counselor. Oh and we’re so not going there with the gratuitous sexual content, and I’m not just talking about a certain “”auto errotic”” scene (stolen pun) that will surely go down in infamy.
However, despite not being able to follow what was going on, the previously mentioned ridiculously incredible cast did their damnest to hold it together. And they made each scene watchable, even if I had no idea what they were talking about. Michael Fassbender has his charm and shark tooth grin that promises to carry you through anything. Penelope Cruz and her innocent optimism probably made her my favorite one to watch, even if she never realy did much. Brad Pitt just seemed happy to be acting across from his Basterds buddy again. Javier Bardem seemed to be the first one clued into the ridiculousness and decided to play it up to the extreme. However, the one I can’t figure out is Cameron Diaz. Was she in on the conspiracy enough to actively aim for winning a Razzie or was she the only one who took it way too \m/ seriously? Because that was an over the top and way too much performance, that I hope for her career was that bad on purpose. Diaz aside, the rest of the crew really could make just about anything interesting.
Or maybe it’s that I’d had the rare caffinated beverage beforehand, so I was extra alert and would have otherwise just dozed off
The Counselor – \m/ \m/