Michael Fassbender stars in the title role as a lawyer, who as far as I could tell his name was Counselor. He becomes engaged to Lara (Penélope Cruz) who is as pretty as she is naive. Reiner (Javier Bardem) is a rich friend who claims "Women are an expensive hobby." His girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz) is extremely high maintenance and out of everyone's league. Counselor has a chance to make some big money when he meets a smooth talking, mutual friend, middle man Westray (Brad Pitt) who arranges for Counselor to finance a drug deal. Seems the biggest problem is going to be how to hide the money. Then in the blink of an eye, things go so wrong as now Counselor and Westray try not to star in a Latino snuff film.The production spends most of the time building up characters with smart dialog. When the twist happens, this changes the film from a clever drama into an action crime drama that needed better action and to last longer. The film seemed to go down hill at the very moment it should have rocketed. It is a well acted film which I enjoyed mostly for the build up. It just didn't bring it home like it should, clearly a weak screen play adaptation.Worth a view as a rental.Parental Guide: F-bomb. Sex. No nudity (Cameron Diaz side breast)

Movie Review: "The Counselor" (2013)Shooting its principal photography between July and October 2012, followed by an extraordinary long post-production period of a year, when director Ridley Scott had been struggling due to his brother Tony Scott's suicide on August 19th 2012 in Los Angeles County with a further dealing relentlessly brutalized screenplay on the criminal condition when a drug-trafficking Texan business man, here given face to out-for-mischief playing actor Brad Pitt, overthrows himself with a perfectly-organized Mexican cartel deal originally-conceived by first-to-be novelist then turning screenwriter Cormac McCarthy, known for writing the thriller-novelty "No Country For Old Men" in 2005, which had been adapted to the screen in Academy-Award-winning efforts by The Coen Brothers in 2007.Title-given leading character, performed by Michael Fassbender, who shares one extraordinary scene in the final third of a 110-Minute-Editorial initiated by R. Scott's long-time collaborating as entrusted editor Pietro Scalia in a simple cross-cut of The Counselor sitting in a car under breeding summer conditions and Mexican cartel "Jefe", portrayed with single-handed efforts by actor Rubén Blades of owning the picture in itself a calmly-received rock of the aftermath due to a monologue of futile revelations, where a just-reacting Michael Fassbender in face of his character's life annihilated must accept the situation of losing properties and control, which director Ridley Scott so masterfully prepared to hit the any matured audience's nerve.Nevertheless this strict thriller only works in a few single scene, especially with actresses innocently-then-spoiled playing Penelope Cruz to ultra-hardshipping character of saving-her-own-skin Malkina, in show-stealing beat performances by Cameron Diaz versus Javier Bardem to lose as character Reiner, when my only wish had been that this potentially full-throttle piece of cinema had been become the suspense-gripping picture; brought to controversial flourishment of pain-stakingl honesty on human behaviors in-debt in greed with its seemingly disturbing subject matter of ending the world as we know it.© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Just an awful piece of film making with a really great cast and a terrible plat

.... fail to understand the avalanche of others who comment with hard disdain. The movie dealt with the most base of human drives - greed and jealousy. These drive the movie from start to finish.It is the unnamed 'counselor' that the film continues to return to We are never told Fassbinder's actual name. He pops in and out of the script and yet it is his act of charity towards a woman who comes around to blame him for her son's demise and painful end.Fassbender is warned to consider the risks in investing in this 'deal' and even though his '%' is small he and the woman he loves will suffer for his 'greed'.Brad Pitt, increasingly in all films, is the weakest link in the cast.The Counselor is a very nuanced film that tells a rich story of empty souls who have no peace and know not when their very lives will suddenly end.Great film