The Counselor [Movie-2013]

Director - Ridley Scott
Run Time - 1 hour, 57 minutes
Genre - Action/Thriller

Cameron Diaz. Penelope Cruz. Brad Pitt. Javier Bardem. Michael Fassbender. With a cast like this, you expect a movie worth your time. But a star cast alone cannot make the movie a success. This movie could have been so much better if more importance was given to the plot. It was confusing, haphazard, and simply put, TOO much in too little time duration.

There were way too many characters. As the title suggests, The Counselor' -Michael Fassbender should have been the protagonist but that doesn't seem to be the case here.The movie, which identifies itself in the genre of an 'Action' or a 'Thriller', fails to justify so. It is incorporated with heavy dialogues and at times one doesn't even seem to identify the point of them. The plot is lousy, with a very little explanation as to the events in the movie, and is degenerated even further by its weak climax.

Sin is a choice. The tagline of the film. We see the movie revolve around the basic evil that the world faces, i.e. GREED. Everyone is money hungry, and we see the characters delve into drug trading, kidnapping and murder to attain more wealth. But the thing is, we do not get a rationale behind the events taking place in the movie. For example, why would the cartel not want to talk to The Counselor after the murder of 'The Green Hornet'. Nor do we see a confrontation between The Counselor, and Ruth - the Green Hornet's mother, who was his client. We just get to know, Ruth is asking for the head of The Counselor.

The leopards, the long scene with the diamond dealer who goes on talking about Jews and how the countries which rejected Jews do not prosper [WTF] and Malkina's [Cameron Diaz] showdown with the priest in the confession box too make no apparent sense in the movie, and as stated earlier, makes the movie disorganized and confusing. Ridley Scott, acclaimed director of movies like Alien, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down and American Gangster fails miserably in this movie. Not expected from someone of his status.

The movie starts with The Counselor, falling in love with his girlfriend Laura [Penelope Cruz] and asking her to marry him. Amidst this, he is planning to start a nightclub with his friend Reiner [Javier Bardem]. To finance this venture, he gets into a drug trade investment with Westray [Brad Pitt], who promises to give a 400,000 times return on the investment. Greed, which is a central theme of the movie, is exhibited here. Enter Reiner's love interest Malkina, who is apparently trying to get all the money for herself. We have no idea how she gets onto the whole schematics of this trade. Thus, the trade goes wrong, and the blame comes on The Counselor, and mind you, the Mexican drug cartel is not forgiving. Add in some brutal murders, more confusion. We reach to the climax, which is even more diasspointing. We do not even get an insight into what happens to The Counselor at the end.

We have small, very small cameos from Natalie Dormer of Game of Thrones fame [Margarey Tyerll] and Dean Norris of Breaking Bad [Hank Schrader] fame - who's role in the film is also just added for the sake of it.

If the director could have focused more on the plot, rather than adding useless scenes, which do not bear any addition to the plot of the movie, it could have been a much better movie.

The appeal of the star cast led me into watching the movie, but I advise you to avoid it all costs. Not worth wasting time on. My rating - 5/10