63
The film doesn't temper enough of Cormac McCarthy's excesses, but Ridley Scott and his ensemble find enough meat in his scenario to make for diverting, bloody pleasure.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
No amount of needless chatter can quite dilute the power of The Counselor’s grim endgame, especially given the way its writer and director conspire to keep the threat offscreen, like some terrible, unseen force of nature.
42
It’s as if “The Man Of Steel” was ninety minutes of supervillians shit-talking Superman, then casually sticking kryptonite in his face without even pretending it’s a surprise.
67
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
Fassbender, though, gets the kudos (again) as the man who has everything but loses it all – thanks partly to a slyly cast Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) and, more important, to the character’s moral compass that points wherever he feels it should, until, of course, it points due south of heaven.
30
The Counsellor is neither an outright disaster nor misunderstood masterpiece: it’s just a very bad idea for a film, proficiently executed.
30
The script is nearly all dialogue, including several eloquent spoken passages toward the end, but it’s a lousy story, ineptly constructed and rendered far too difficult to follow.
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Richard Roeper
The Counselor achieves the almost unheard-of daily double of giving us the most outrageous sex scene of the year AND the most unforgettably brutal murder of the year. This is a badass journey from start to finish.
70
McCarthy’s voice comes through strongly enough to excuse the film’s excesses and cast its more generic plot elements in a new light.
30
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
Despite its scaldingly hot cast and formidable writer/director combination, The Counselor is simply not a very likable or gratifying film. In fact, it's a bummer.