The Counselor

This was effing AWESOME…. advertising.  I tip my hat to the marketing team.  What a brilliant investment in PR and the marketing team’s job on selling this flick was stellar.  Rarely - RARELY, I say… have I been so expertly manipulated (save for a couple of incidents in my youth) by a trailer and a few respected names in a commercial.  Aside from an almost random story told by the great Javier Bardem’s character, this movie lacked any memorable moments, quotes, scenes, insights, or nearly anything else of any appreciable value.  In fewer, more pointed words… The Counselor sucked.

VITALS

Cormac McCarthy (Novels - No Country for Old Men, The Road) - Writer

Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Prometheus) - Director

Michael Fassbender (Shame, 12 Years a Slave) - Counselor

Penelope Cruz (Vicky Christina Barcelona, POTC: On Stranger Tides) - Laura

Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men, Skyfall) - Reiner

Brad Pitt (12 Years a Slave, World War Z) - Westray

Cameron Diaz (Any Given Sunday, Knight and Day) - Malkina

Ruben Blades (Do the Right Thing, Safe House) - Jefe

Rosie Perez (Do the Right Thing, Pineapple Express) - Ruth

Natalie Dormer (Rush, TV’s The Tudors)

IF YOU MUST KNOW:

The Counselor was the Seinfeld of movies, but without the funny – translation: this was about NOTHING.  The Counselor (Fassbender), a highly paid criminal defense attorney???, has fallen on whatever hard times means for a dude who is buying a 3+ karat million dollar engagement ring for his fine fiancée, Laura (Cruz).  He decides to work with Reiner (Bardem), one of his shady drug-dealing clients in order to help bolster his bank account and make his paper stack.  Awesome premise…? Eh.  So… crap shockingly hits the fan on his very first deal and it just keeps getting worse for the Counselor, Reiner, and everyone in their circle.  Damn shame.  How is a rich white man to make it in this world if he can’t even get a drug deal to go right without pissing off a nondescript Mexican cartel? 

Well, that’s the story.  Drug deal goes wrong, cartel gets involved violence ensues, random speech and the flick ends with sharp cut to a black screen.  Sounds awesome, don’t it?  If so, I would like to take this opportunity to invite anyone who thinks so to entreat your friends and family to, upon sight, slap the s#!t out of you… LITERALLY (as said in my best Rob Lowe from Parks and Recreations voice).

Oh, I nearly forgot, there are a couple of good takeaways from this movie:

1)   Penelope Cruz (who I have grown to appreciate so much since her surgical separation from the Tom, as I have also grown to appreciate Nicole Kidman after a similar procedure) is bada$$. She needs better mainstream non-lame movies.  It is fun to watch her as she exudes sexiness without even speaking much less when she is being coy about that act which shall not be named in order to maintain a certain level of PGness in these reviews – it rhymes with schmunnilingus.  Trust me, it sounds better coming from her than it reads written by this schlub.

2)   Natalie Dormer… looks good.  I am about to re-watch the Tudors.  That is all.

Pointless performance from Brad Pitt, what was he supposed to be exactly?  Cameron Diaz was believable as a sexy bitchy woman – no judgment.  I kinda like that Cameron. 

Ridley Scott… I expect more from you.  I still trust you despite the Prometheus fiasco, but I warn anyone reading this that you see The Counselor at your own peril.  I do think the scene with Cameron Diaz on the car was worth one rating point gross and time consuming as it was, so…

IMTHATDUDE gives The Counselor: 1 (maybe a two for a couple of great lines).

RATING SYSTEM:

5 = You should be about halfway to the theatre by now… Well… GET!
4 = Definitely worth the bread. Niiice.
3 = I won’t cuss anybody out and demand my paper back.
2 = Somewhere SOUTH of under-whelmed./I know it has a pulse, but…
1 = Not a good look. They played me AND I played myself.