What’s a good movie anyway? I don’t know, but I’m pretty confident in saying that “The Counselor” is a good movie. Maybe even more than that.
So I don’t know why people aren’t talking about it more. Maybe if this was 2008 and people suddenly cared again about Cormac McCarthy. (What a horrible statement, thought and sentiment.) What I also don’t know is why people dismiss it. In the US it’s been hailed as some sort of horrible travesty, or (hardly better) a coming camp classic.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t things that are strange: the glasses, the now already infamous “fucking a car” scene (which works in context I think), the monologues. But by the end almost of that strangeness is shed, or mutates rather into some genuine punches in the face. If you’ve been paying attention that is.
It is – and that of course is the highest compliment to pay a film – like something from the 70s. Raw and delicate, breaking rules, sometimes just plain weird. Not all the parts fit. A great openness. Maybe that’s what puts some people off.
And something else is like the 70s too. For at least the first two thirds of the film I was convinced it’s a tract on men who hate women or at the very least find them scary. It turns into something else by the end – something more unsettling, in ways both good and bad. The discursive nature just turns out to be setups piled on setups. And then comes the dark payoff. I’m still not sure what to think, and I think I want to see it again. Which might be the definition of a good movie. Or maybe not.