The Counselor (spelled The Counsellor in some markets) is a 2013 British-American thriller film directed by Ridley Scott, from the original film screenplay by Cormac McCarthy. The film stars Michael Fassbender as the eponymous Counselor—who gets in over his head in a drugs deal around the troubled Juarez, Mexico / Texas border area—as well as Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Brad Pitt. The film deals with themes of greed, death, the primal instincts of humans and their consequences.
| The Counselor | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
| |
| Directed by | Ridley Scott |
| Written by | Cormac McCarthy |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring |
|
| Cinematography | Dariusz Wolski |
| Edited by | Pietro Scalia |
| Music by | Daniel Pemberton |
Production |
|
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 117 minutes[1] |
| Countries |
|
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million[2] |
| Box office | $70,237,649[3] |
The Counselor was chosen as the closing film at the 2013 Morelia Film Festival and also played the Cork Film Festival. The London premiere was held on October 3, 2013 in Leicester Square. The New York City premiere was held on October 9, 2013. The film has received mixed reviews from critics and was theatrically released on October 25, 2013.
The story begins with a man, known only as "The Counselor" (Michael Fassbender), and his girlfriend Laura (Penélope Cruz) lying in bed and speaking to one another in an increasingly suggestive and erotic manner. The Counselor then performs oral sex on Laura. Meanwhile, somewhere in Mexico, cocaine is being packaged in barrels and concealed in a sewage truck. The truck is driven across the border and stored at a sewage treatment plant. The Counselor goes to Amsterdam on what he claims is a business trip, but is actually a meeting with a diamond dealer (Bruno Ganz) in order to purchase an engagement ring for Laura. Back in the United States, The Counselor proposes to Laura, and she accepts. He attends a party at a house owned by Reiner (Javier Bardem) and his girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz). The Counselor and Reiner have a lengthy discussion, during which Reiner claims that The Counselor is not capitalizing on his position of power as much as he could be. The Counselor meets with Westray (Brad Pitt), a business associate, to express interest in a drug deal with a four-thousand percent return rate.
Westray warns The Counselor about becoming involved in such a deal, saying that Mexican cartels are merciless, particularly to lawyers. The Counselor visits one of his clients, a prison inmate named Ruth (Rosie Perez) who is on trial for murder. Ruth's son is a biker and a valued cartel member known as "The Green Hornet" recently arrested for speeding. The Counselor agrees to bail him out of jail. Malkina employs "The Wireman" (Sam Spruell) to steal the drugs. He does this by decapitating the biker with a wire stretched across the highway. After collecting the component that will allow the sewage truck to start, The Wireman drives to the sewage treatment plant, where he steals the truck containing the cocaine. Learning of this incident, Westray meets with The Counselor to notify him that The Green Hornet is dead and that the cocaine has been stolen, bleakly intoning The Counselor's culpability.
Simultaneously, both Ruth and the cartel link The Counselor to the death of the biker and the theft of the drugs. The cartel has found that he bailed out The Green Hornet, which appears as suspect timing and fully blameworthy for the putative purposes of the cartel. The Counselor seeks help from Reiner but receives nothing more than Reiner telling him that his fate is sealed. In Texas, two cartel members pretending to be police officers pull over The Wireman and his accomplice. A shootout ensues when the accomplice shoots and kills one of the "officers" and wounds the other. The wounded cartel member manages to kill the accomplice and The Wireman, accidentally shooting the sewage truck and purposely gunning down a passing-by driver. Reiner is accidentally killed by cartel members while attempting to capture him, and Laura is simultaneously kidnapped. In a last-ditch effort, The Counselor contacts Jefe (Rubén Blades), a high-ranking cartel member, for information on the whereabouts of Laura, Reiner, and Westray, or suggestions on what to do next. Jefe advises The Counselor to live with the choices he has made.
After the truck is fixed and the wounded cartel member is cared for, he goes to the meeting location where the buyer (Dean Norris) gets his cocaine. The Counselor goes back to Mexico, hoping to find Laura. A package is slipped under the door of his hotel room. He opens it and finds a DVD with "Hola!" written on the side. The Counselor breaks down completely, heavily implying that the disk contains an execution video of Laura from the cartel. Laura's decapitated body is dumped at a landfill. Meanwhile, Malkina's failed effort to steal the drugs means that she is out the money she wants. She tracks Westray to London, hiring a woman (Natalie Dormer) to seduce him and steal his bank codes. She then has Westray brutally killed to get his computer to access the account. Malkina meets her banker (Goran Višnjić) at an expensive restaurant. She advises him that he is in over his head and that he needs to get out of the business because if need be, he would be expendable. They turn to the menu and the film ends with her saying "I'm famished."
Writing for Serpentbox on 28 October 2013, Vincent Carrella identified the Spanish poet Antonio Machado as the source of the poetic verses used by the cartel kingpin, The Jefe, when speaking to The Counselor. In the second half of the film, The Jefe recites directly from the poem to The Counselor, “Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace camino al andar,” which translates in its original context as: Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road -- Only wakes upon the sea. This passage is taken from Machado's poem Campos de Castilla with Machado's reflections upon the prospects of his own life after learning of his wife being diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis from which she would die within a year. The Jefe uses the poem to inform The Counselor of his own impending demise. In the film, The Jefe concludes by telling The Counselor, “You are the world you have created. And when you cease to exist, that world you have created will also cease to exist.”[4]
On January 18, 2012, it was reported that novelist Cormac McCarthy had sold his first spec script, The Counselor, to Nick Wechsler, Paula Mae Schwartz, and Steve Schwartz, who had previously produced the film adaptation of McCarthy's novel The Road.[6] On January 31, it was reported that Ridley Scott was currently considering several directorial projects, but that there was a strong possibility that The Counselor would be his next film and his follow-up to Prometheus.[7] On February 9, it was confirmed that Scott would direct.[8]
Principal photography began on July 27, 2012 in London. The film was also shot in Spain and the United States.[9] On August 20, 2012, Scott halted production of the film due to his brother Tony's death. He canceled that week's shoot in order to travel to Los Angeles to be with his brother's family.[10] Scott returned to London to resume production on September 3.[11]
The film was dedicated to the memory of Tony Scott, who had taken his own life during production, and Matthew Baker, an assistant director on the film who has since died.[12]
The first teaser trailer was released June 25, 2013.
Costume designer Janty Yates collaborated with Giorgio Armani on the film as a part of a new partnership between Armani and 20th Century Fox that also extends into retail and digital initiatives.[13] Armani was enlisted to create the wardrobes for the characters portrayed by Michael Fassbender and Penélope Cruz.[14] In addition to Armani, designer Paula Thomas also contributed to the film's wardrobe by dressing Cameron Diaz's character, Malkina, with roughly 15 different outfits.[15] "[It wasn't until] I read the script that I realized why [Scott] called upon me," said Thomas. "[Cameron's] character has a lot of elements of a Thomas Wylde woman. [She's] bold, edgy, modern. She’s about wanting to be seen, as opposed to blending into the background."[16]
For Javier Bardem's character, Yates applied a widely colorful wardrobe that was mostly made up of pieces of Versace.[16] As for Bardem's hair, the idea was the actor's own and inspired by film producer Brian Grazer's hairdo.[17]
The film scoretoThe Counselor was composed by Daniel Pemberton.[18] Pemberton recorded the score with a full orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in addition to integrating home-recorded guitar noises and textures.[19] "Ridley responds really well to interesting and unusual sounds," explained Pemberton on the composer-director relationship. "So as a composer who likes making unusual sounds, that’s exciting. It was daunting but he was great to work with and up for experimenting. [...] He made the process a lot less scary than it should have been."[20] A soundtrack album was released digitally on October 22 and in physical forms on November 11, 2013 by Milan Records.[21]
Preliminary reports had The Counselor tracking for a $8.6–$13 million debut in North America.[22][23] The film opened to $3.2 million in 3,336 locations on Friday and opened at #4 in the box office with just a cumulative $7,842,930 over the weekend.[24]
The film currently holds a 34% approval rating on review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 187 reviews, with an average score of 4.9/10. The consensus reads: "The Counselor raises expectations with its talented cast and creative crew—then subverts them with a wordy and clumsy suspense thriller that's mercilessly short on suspense or thrills."[25]OnMetacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 based on reviews from critics, the film has a score of 48 based on 42 reviews, considered to be "mixed or average reviews".[26] It received a very negative grade of a "D" from market-research firm CinemaScore.[27]
Todd McCarthyofThe Hollywood Reporter gave the film a negative review, calling it "not a very likable or gratifying film," adding that "one is left with a very bleak ending and an only slightly less depressing sense of the waste of a lot of fine talent both behind and in front of the camera."[28] Noted critic Mark Kermode listed it as number two on his Ten Worst Films of 2013. [29]The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan stated, "As cold, precise and soulless as the diamonds that figure briefly in its plot, The Counselor is an extremely unpleasant piece of business."[30] Peter Debruge of Variety criticized Cormac McCarthy's script, saying that his "first original script is nearly all dialogue, but it's a lousy story, ineptly constructed and rendered far too difficult to follow."[31]
Conversely, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four, saying "director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Cormac McCarthy have fashioned a sexy, sometimes shockingly violent, literate and richly textured tale of the Shakespearean consequences of one man’s irrevocable act of avarice" and called it "a bloody great time."[32] In addition, Manohla DargisofThe New York Times gave the film a rave review, stating that "Mr. McCarthy appears to have never read a screenwriting manual in his life [...] That's a compliment."[33] Danny Leigh of the BBC film review programme Film 2013 praised the film, saying that "the real star is the script. What this film really is a Cormac McCarthy audiobook with visuals by Ridley Scott. It's black as night, engrossing and masterful." He also acclaimed the performances, particularly Diaz's, and said, with regard to the negative reviews, "Movie history is littered with films that we all sneered at and we all laughed at and we all thought were terrible and the critics hated them and no-one went to see them, and then 40 years later they fetch up on programmes like this with everyone saying 'what a masterpiece!'"[34]
Scott Foundas, chief film critic for Variety, wrote a defense of the film titled "Why The Counselor Is One of Ridley Scott's Best Films" in which he compared it to John Boorman's Point Blank and the screenplay to the work of David Mamet, Harold Pinter, and Quentin Tarantino. Foundas writes, "[the film] is bold and thrilling in ways that mainstream American movies rarely are, and its rejection suggests what little appetite there is for real daring at the multiplex nowadays."[35]
| Year | Group | Award | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | London Critics Circle Film Awards | British Actor of the Year | Nominated | Michael Fassbender |
| 2014 | MTV Movie Awards | Best WTF Moment | Nominated | Cameron Diaz |
{{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |seriesno= ignored (|series-number= suggested) (help)
