The Counselor (2013)

Michael Fassbender stars in the title role as a lawyer, who as far as I could tell his name was Counselor. He becomes engaged to Lara (Penélope Cruz) who is as pretty as she is naive. Reiner (Javier Bardem) is a rich friend who claims "Women are an expensive hobby." His girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz) is extremely high maintenance and out of everyone's league. Counselor has a chance to make some big money when he meets a smooth talking, mutual friend, middle man Westray (Brad Pitt) who arranges for Counselor to finance a drug deal. Seems the biggest problem is going to be how to hide the money. Then in the blink of an eye, things go so wrong as now Counselor and Westray try not to star in a Latino snuff film.The production spends most of the time building up characters with smart dialog. When the twist happens, this changes the film from a clever drama into an action crime drama that needed better action and to last longer. The film seemed to go down hill at the very moment it should have rocketed. It is a well acted film which I enjoyed mostly for the build up. It just didn't bring it home like it should, clearly a weak screen play adaptation.Worth a view as a rental.Parental Guide: F-bomb. Sex. No nudity (Cameron Diaz side breast)

Don't waste your time! Pretentious garbage with over the top dialog, a plot full of holes. Garbage!

Critics hated this one because it was talky and plodding...a non-thrilling thriller. But it still has McCarthy going for it. The first hour of dialogue alone was worth the price of admission: dark and poetic and violent. It sucked me in, even if it did not fully deliver from there. The writing and the acting were great, even if the plot was flawed.

Seems most audiences that fell for this one needed a counselor to unravel the mess it left in their heads. For a mainstream movie, they don't come much grubbier than this. I've never understood the regard some folk hold for director Ridley Scott, who proves with this shoddy work how overrated he can be. As for highly esteemed writer Cormac McCarthy - perhaps at 84 it's time to hang up his pen. Character motivation is largely unexplored and the situations bounce from one glib, almost impossible to understand circumstance to the next. The highest ideals for any of these characters run in the order of greed, avarice, booze, drugs and obsessive sexual obscenity of the most perverse nature. Cameron Diaz is beginning to look as ugly as the foul morality she tends to represent, Penelope Cruz basically appears to represent little more than a woman for a bed - shared by Michael Fassbender in an unnecessarily overdone opening section. Brad Pitt's by-the-numbers role is not much more than a station on the way and could have gone to any number of lesser names. Fassbender's ridiculous decision to play for deathly high stakes with merciless drug cartels offering a deal with a 4000 x return rate (yes you read right!) at least it gives him a chance to show some fear- filled remorse - with possibly one of the better performances in this jigsaw puzzle with too many missing pieces. If your most endearing inspirations for living are superficial greed, perverse sexuality, fashion, drugs or how many people you can cruelly murder, then you could find something to identify with here. Otherwise, save your brain and time, find something else to watch and leave this to the criminal element and biker gangs but, even they may prefer to go ridin'.