Reviews for this film from our members:
- Marco Albanese @ Stanze di Cinema [Italian]
- Excerpt: Il potere è senza volto, le vittime, come l’avvocato o come il cadavere che viaggia assieme alla droga, sono senza nome. McCarthy va alla radice del male. Qui le parole non possono più a nulla.
- Mario Alegre @ Primera Hora [Spanish]
- [New – 1/20/14] | Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- Excerpt: McMurty je svoje likove, koji bi inace trebali pripadati kriminalnom polusvijetu, pretvorio u filozofe koji zvuce poput profesionalnih televizijskih komentatora.
- José Arce @ LaButaca.net [Spanish]
- Excerpt: El primer guion cinematográfico de Cormac McCarthy tenía todas las papeletas para convertirse en una de las películas de la década, y aunque no lo consigue puede considerarse una película notable en forma y fondo. Eso sí, es anticomercial hasta lo suicida.
- Edwin Arnaudin @ Ashvegas
- Excerpt: Those looking for Dan Brown entertainment will quickly be overwhelmed, but those who can respect McCarthy for the dense writer he is and trust in his guidance are in for a dark, complex treat.
- Daniel Carlson @ Pajiba
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: a bore and a chore
- Bob Cashill @ Popdose.com
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The film’s like an elite distant cousin to Michael Bay’s “Pain and Gain.”
- Tony Dayoub @ RogerEbert.com
- Excerpt: …macabre sensationalism is a quality more often associated with Tony than Ridley. That quality permeates THE COUNSELOR’s final third along with an overwhelming sense of betrayal and grief.
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: La primera hora de esta película es insufrible. Scott pasa constantemente de personaje a personaje, nunca tienes muy claro hacia dónde va la trama y nunca sabes qué es realmente importante.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: This is not so much a character study as it is a study of attitude.
- Takis Gkaris @ www.moviesltd.gr [Greek]
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Bleak and formidable, this brutal, depressing, cautionary tale may be an actor’s dream but it’s an audience’s nightmare – a muddled mess of a movie.
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- Roderick Heath @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: The Counselor actually does film noir a great service in apparently subverting it, returning actual gravitas and unnerving impudence to the genre, and along with it some of the quaking existential fear it once transmitted.
- Travis Hopson @ Punch Drunk Critics
- Excerpt: The Counselor is exactly the type of ugly, depraved tale of the vengeful and virtue-less that fans of his work will love
- Blake Howard @ Graffiti with Punctuation
- Excerpt: The Counselor delves into the abject amorality of criminality. It’s a devastating examination of greed and grief in the overwhelming wilds of apathy; you’ll love it if you like that sort of thing.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Almost, but not quite, hilariously demented — if accidentally so — drama about sex and death, and why not to get involved with drug cartels.
- Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: As merciless as a wire tightening around the neck, “The Counselor” appears to an enticingly deceptive pulp thriller with all the noir ingredients in place, ready to percolate, until little of it holds together and we’re left waiting for it to still find momentum and stay on course.
- Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Glenn Lovell @ CinemaDope.com
- Excerpt: … a ludicrous, laughably overwritten and over-the-top attempt to one-up ‘No Country for Old Men’
- Marty Mapes @ Movie Habit
- Excerpt: Bleak Counselor is more Cormac than Ridley
- Brent McKnight @ Beyond Hollywood
- Excerpt: The Counselor isn’t a terrible movie, but it is a terrifically wasted opportunity.
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Cormac McCarthy and Ridley Scott drop a ‘Lincoln’ log with this speech-laden film.
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: Harsh and uncompromising and breathtakingly beautiful all the same, The Counselor is brilliant, brilliant stuff. Love it or hate it, it’s an unforgettable experience.
- Jamie S. Rich @ DVD Talk
- Excerpt: The actors’ efforts make The Counselor passable, even allowing one to forgive rookie screenwriter mistakes (every mode of killing in the climax has been telegraphed in ways that would make Chekhov blush) and Daniel Pemberton’s on-the-nose scoring. Still, there are a lot of flaws, so much so that the scales nearly tip the wrong way.
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: A silver lining is Bardem’s performance as the eccentric kingpin Reiner and the always effective Fassbender. But to assume the existence of a silver lining, one must first recognize the dark and dreary storm clouds, the type that linger over The Counselor from frame one.
- Amir Siregar @ Flick Magazine [Indonesian]
- Josh Spiegel @ Sound on Sight
- Excerpt: But in the title character’s struggle for survival against implacable odds, so well captured in Michael Fassbender’s cocksure appearance that fades quickly into fear and overwrought emotion, The Counselor at times evokes those protagonists from McCarthy’s best novels.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: Terrible–nasty, ultra-violent and borderline incoherent.
- Jean-François Vandeuren @ Panorama-cinema.com [French]
- Bill Weber @ Slant
- Excerpt: A pitiless Texas-border noir that wears its misanthropy like a lapel pin.
