Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Clifton Johnson 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.

krocheav 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'.

paul2001sw-1 Ridely Scott's film 'The Counsellor' tells the story of a formerly straight lawyer who decides to carry out a drug deal, which (predictably) goes wrong. But this is not a conventional action film, except for brief excerpts: in the main, it consists of its very cool characters having highly stylised conversations (typified by the fact that the hero is only ever referred to eponymously as "Counsellor") about action that is mostly occurring off screen. Or, as Mark Kermode put it, reviewing for the Guardian, "an A-list cast speaks B-movie dialogue with C-grade effects", playing "the kind of philosophising drug-dealers that even Tarantino would stay clear of". And while this is harsh, it's not altogether untrue. The rhythms of this movie do grow on you over time; but it's simply not as clever as it thinks it is.

rusoviet .... fail to understand the avalanche of others who comment with hard disdain. The movie dealt with the most base of human drives - greed and jealousy. These drive the movie from start to finish.It is the unnamed 'counselor' that the film continues to return to We are never told Fassbinder's actual name. He pops in and out of the script and yet it is his act of charity towards a woman who comes around to blame him for her son's demise and painful end.Fassbender is warned to consider the risks in investing in this 'deal' and even though his '%' is small he and the woman he loves will suffer for his 'greed'.Brad Pitt, increasingly in all films, is the weakest link in the cast.The Counselor is a very nuanced film that tells a rich story of empty souls who have no peace and know not when their very lives will suddenly end.Great film