The Counselor (known as The Counsellor in countries that use British English) is a 2013 crime thriller film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Cormac McCarthy.
It stars Michael Fassbender as the eponymous Counselor as well as Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, and Brad Pitt.
Returning to the United States, the Counselor attends a party in Texas thrown by drug dealer Reiner and his girlfriend Malkina.
Following the conversation with Westray, the Counselor visits a prison inmate named Ruth, a court-appointed client of his who is on trial for murder.
Learning of the theft, Westray meets with the Counselor to notify him of the biker's true identity, a valued drug cartel member known as "the Green Hornet".
In a last-ditch effort, the Counselor contacts Jefe, a high-ranking cartel member, for suggestions on what to do next and to plead to spare Laura's life.
Malkina then meets her banker Michael at a restaurant, coolly explaining how she wants her profits and accounts to be handled and plans to move to Hong Kong.
In the second half of the film, Jefe recites directly from the poem Campos de Castilla by Spanish poet Antonio Machado.
Jefe shares this line from the poem as well as details about Machado's reflections regarding the prospects of his own life after learning of his wife being diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis.
[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.
[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.
[18] Pemberton recorded the score with a full orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in addition to integrating home-recorded guitar noises and textures.
[27] A 2017 data analysis of Metacritic reviews by Gizmodo UK found The Counselor to be the second most critically divisive film of recent years.
[25] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave 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.
[30] Los Angeles Times critic 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.
"[32] 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".
[33] In addition, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times gave it a rave review, stating that "Mr. McCarthy appears to have never read a screenwriting manual in his life [...] That's a compliment.
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 programs like this with everyone saying 'what a masterpiece!
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.
I said, “I’ll do it now, but it has to be now.” And from that, I got it cast in two weeks—Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz … they were all fighting to do these parts.