The Counselor shows Scott’s pessimism alongside his obsessions with visual design and environment...

| Oct 10, 2024

The movie tries to be outside the box but only lives in despair and lifeless blunder.

| Original Score: D+ | Aug 15, 2024

Just as he's done in many of his novels, McCarthy's first screenplay follows his stylized, almost mythically cynicism with unwavering detachment and insight.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 22, 2022

McCarthy is ambitious in his first original screenplay,(...) in the end (...) [it] could even be too verbose for a critical audience.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 9, 2021

Even if it's sometimes bumbling and inexplicable - it's never not totally captivating.

| Jul 6, 2021

Some will find it a head scratcher, others will be drawn into its uncompromising look at life and death, cartel style.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 31, 2021

Anything but subtle - and also not very inventive.

| Original Score: 2/10 | Dec 3, 2020

It's an imperfectly glorious film that is flawlessly written, impeccably acted, and impossible to forget.

| Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 5, 2020

The Counselor is chock full of talent...Despite this, the movie ends up leaving the viewer feeling empty. There are some nicely staged scenes, but the script is just full of rambling dialog.

| Jul 17, 2020

You continually feel like right here, this very moment, is where things are going to change, where the film begins living up to its potential. Instead, however, you find yourself waiting for something that never comes.

| Original Score: C | Jul 8, 2020

Disappointing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 24, 2020

The Counselor is a colossal waste of (mostly) talented pretty people, revealed as mere puppets to over baked material, and perhaps evidence that great prose does not always translate into great screenplays.

| Aug 28, 2019

The Counselor is a horrifying reminder that even the best of us are capable of bad, bad things.

| Original Score: F | Aug 27, 2019

The Counselor has too much dialogue and too many stars all dressed up with nowhere to go.

| Aug 7, 2019

It's a convoluted mess that is more dull than intriguing.

| Original Score: D+ | Apr 9, 2019

Undoubtedly a film peppered with flaws that blows hot and cold from one scene to the next, but despite its many bizarre eccentricities, it still manages to hang together -- just.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 6, 2019

The filmmakers seem to have been going for both, but despite their great cast, the characters aren't allowed sufficient breathing room for us to believe in them enough to care.

| Original Score: B- | Jan 25, 2019

In any event, for a movie with Oscar potential, I can only describe it as disappointing.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Nov 3, 2018

I get the feeling that everyone involved was too revering of [Cormac] McCarthy's work to change it ...

| Original Score: 4.5/10 | Nov 1, 2018

So, Ridley Scott, when your film asked me, in its deepest sincerity: 'Have you been bad?' The answer is yes, Counselor, you sure have.

| Original Score: 3.5/10 | Oct 12, 2018