The Counselor (Ridley Scott, 2013)

7.5/10
There are movies I was born to like, and despite being a critical and commercial flop, The Counselor was one of them. Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author, and he wrote the screenplay, and it stars three of my current favorite actors: Fassbender, Pitt and Bardem. Plus Penelope Cruz. I don't care too much for Ridley Scott or Cameron Diaz, but as long as they didn't interfere too much, I didn't foresee myself not liking it, and I was right about that much.
Actually I'm surprised the movie did so poorly critically, as I found it reminded me a great deal of No Country for Old Men. Okay maybe it wasn't as artistic, but Ridley Scott ain't the Coens either. But it mined a lot of the same territory. You have an everyman (at opposite ends of the wealth spectrum, mind you) involving himself in a drug deal, being way out of his depth, coming up against an unstoppable force. Fassbender's Counselor is a comparable to No Country's Llewelyn, Pitt's Westray is Carson Wells (they might as well have used the same wardrobe), and Diaz's Malkina is Anton Chigurh. Unlike NCFOM, there is no Sherriff Bell as outside respite, this time we're mired in the muck with the creatures themselves.
Thematically the two movies evoke similar questions - questions of mortality, of the decisions we've made, and as kihei perfectly put it, "that we sometimes believe there are still choices to be made long after the opportunity for choosing has passed". No big answers are given except the brutal, expected ones but the conversations that raise these themes (Pitt vs. Fassbender twice, Fassbender vs. the drug lord, Diaz vs. Cruz) are the meat of the movie and the things I could watch endlessly.
My friend who saw the movie with me (and who was the only other person besides myself in the theatre) complained that the movie didn't make clear things like Westray's involvement in the drug deal, or exactly how the deal went bad (the gizmo attached to the truck, etc). My position was that these things don't matter. It doesn't matter how Westray is involved, just that he is. Similarly, in No Country, it didn't matter what happened to Llewelyn, just that it did.
Maybe it's that frustration at not having the basics explained that led to such a poor critical showing? The characters themselves don't have much depth, but their situations and their themes do, to me. And while it wasn't a brilliant movie, I still thought it was very interesting and had enough going for it to warrant a better reception than what it's getting.
Also I'm still stumped regarding McCarthy's position on women - whether he hates them, worships them, is terrified of them, or some combination of all three. Regardless, Diaz's Malkina was a really different, interesting character, and some of the best work Diaz has done in ages.