Ridley Scott Says ‘The Counselor’ Should Have Been “F***ing Huge!”

I’m not sure if that movie would work anyway. I like McCarthy’s books, but the movie didn’t seem to have a clear approach or mood concerning the plot. I felt it could work if it was made by Tony Scott – it reminded me of Revenge -, but again, it’d have to fix mood and approach issues.

“The Counselor” is really one of his masterpieces. Underrated stuff for sure.

‘Someone to Watch Over Me‘ and ‘A Good Year’ are atrocious films. The former was whiny, shrill and deservedly trounced at the box office by the similarly-themed and (still not that good but) vastly superior ‘The Bodyguard’ years later, whilst the latter is as tone-deaf as his comments. Look, some of the best modern romcoms like ‘When Harry Met Sally’ and ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ are about the concerns of upper middle-class people, but those films were actually written by intelligent, funny people who knew how to make those characters and their struggles comically entertaining and touchingly relatable. There isn’t anybody who could relate to a romantic comedy about choosing between living in France on a wine vineyard with Marion Cottilard or a multi-million dollar career as a stockbroker in London. That’s a ridiculous premise for a film. Oh, and those other films starred actors that were – despite what you may think of them now – charming as hell in those roles. Crowe was coming off the phone incident and had the aire of being above the genre in that film, thinking that every line that spluttered out of his mouth was about the funniest thing you’d ever heard. It was not and the film suffered for it.

Oh, and – whilst I loved ‘The Counselor’ – it was still a film about a chick that has sex with a car. There is a ceiling to how successful a film like that can be and Fox should be credited, not disparaged, for supporting such a bold venture. And the marketing was perfectly fine. The trailers and TV spots looked cool, whilst the posters put the film stars front and center. The reviews just weren’t there to propel it to wider success. And it started Michael Fassbender, an actor we now know is not a draw unless he is wearing Magneto’s helmet. Scott doesn’t mention Fassbender’s lack of drawing power in films like ‘Steve Jobs’, ‘Assassin’s Creed’ or ‘Alien Covenant’, does he?

There’s nothing wrong with being ‘honest’ but Scott seems to totally lack self-awareness with his comments.

Ridley seems to be lashing at everyone right now. Is he getting senile? He’s certainly suffering from delusions of grandeur.

Ridley is losing it. I know the solution! Another crap Alien film!

The counselor? It didn’t go over anyone’s head, it was just utter shit. Some great actors but direction, dialogue and execution was so poorly done it turned it into a total snoozefest.

The Counselor fails from its poorly written story with every character, story-line, & plot-points practically “foreshadowing” everything from the beginning…
The fact that all the conversations between the characters end up playing out made the whole film quite tacky.
While I’m not a fan of McCarthy, I would expect a respected & talented literary writer to not be as pretentious as his script came out to be.
Ridley is right that with everything involved in terms the stellar cast, Scott’s direction and the fact it’s McCarthy’s 1st written screenplay; this was the “main draw” for audiences & definitely was surprising how the flick bombed at the box-office as it did, but The Counselor inevitably proves that just because you orchestrate all these elements together, doesn’t mean the film as a whole will be successful & critically acclaimed.
#TooBad

Gotta say, when I first saw The Counselor I thought it was a complete misfire, the germ of an interesting film gone haywire. Endless talk, all saddled with unbearably obvious thematic “meaning”, a try-hard Americana imitation of Harold Pinter (or perhaps David Mamet channeling Pinter). I despised the characters, found the sexism disgusting, and felt the whole thing dragged interminably. But it sure was “different”. Months later it popped back into my mind and, on a lark one lazy afternoon, I decided to give it another go.

This time I saw the “unrated director’s cut”. And, I swear, this version felt like a misunderstood almost-masterpiece.

It’s strange that the longer cut (almost 30 minutes longer) feels much shorter, or at least less-cluttered, but there it is. With the material given proper room to breathe and move at a more appropriate pace, McCarthy’s flowery dialogue became a grim pleasure, and his intentions are plainer, too. he’s not writing a straight thriller, nor is he striving for strict realism, rather he’s telling a noirish moral fable in chic gangster-movie drag. The story’s not meant to power forward but gradually layer meaning and anticipation before, KA-CHING, snapping shut like a bear-trap. It’s a nightmare of overestimated privilege. It stung, really stung, even though I already knew where the plot was headed. The actors are better served (some might say “indulged”) in this longer cut, too, revealing enough depth that their hideous characters – while still hideous – become grotesquely fascinating. And even that tasteless flashback where Cameron Diaz you-know-whats a sports-car’s windshield rang differently. I don’t know if they altered the scene itself or if the longer cut just creates a better context for it, but it now felt less like misogynist guff from artists old enough to know better, and more like a direct critique of the intimidated men telling the story – where I was embarrassed for Diaz the first time, this time she OWNS that scene.

It’s still such a strange film, not to mention bleak and cold as a Moscow winter, that I wouldn’t in good conscience recommend it to everyone. But for anyone who enjoys a walk on the wild side of commercial cinema – anyone who, like me, felt that the original cut of The Counselor was a potentially good film gone bad – I’d say the unrated extended edition is totally worth checking out.

kj soupart

Maybe if the movie had a decent script and actual character arcs it would have been better received. Besides The Martian, Scott hasn’t made an above average film since Gladiator (2001)

Another story involving Scott’s massive ego, oy vey. The film was one of the worst in the past 5 years and utter garbage.