The Counselor

On January 18, 2012, it was reported that novelist Cormac McCarthy had sold his first spec script, The Counselor, to Nick Wechsler, Steve Schwartz and Paula Mae Schwartz, who had previously produced the film adaptation of McCarthy's novel The Road.[6] On January 31, it was reported that Ridley Scott was currently considering several directorial projects, but that there was a strong possibility that The Counselor would be his next film and his follow-up to Prometheus.[7] On February 9, it was confirmed that Scott would direct.[8] Scott also became a producer. Cormac McCarthy, Mark Huffam, Michael Schaefer and Michael Costigan are executive producers.

Principal photography began on July 27, 2012 in London. The film was also shot in Spain and the United States.[9] On August 20, 2012, Scott halted production of the film due to his brother Tony's death. He canceled that week's shoot in order to travel to Los Angeles to be with his brother's family.[10] Scott returned to London to resume production on September 3.[11]

The film was dedicated to the memory of Tony Scott, and Matt Baker, the second assistant director on the film who had since died.[12]

Costume designer Janty Yates collaborated with Giorgio Armani on the film as a part of a new partnership between Armani and 20th Century Fox that also extended into retail and digital initiatives.[13] Armani was enlisted to create the wardrobes for the characters portrayed by Michael Fassbender and Penélope Cruz.[14] In addition to Armani, designer Paula Thomas also contributed to the film's wardrobe by dressing Cameron Diaz's character, Malkina, with roughly 15 different outfits.[15] "[It wasn't until] I read the script that I realized why [Scott] called upon me," said Thomas. "[Cameron's] character has a lot of elements of a Thomas Wylde (her own design label) woman. [She's] bold, edgy, modern. She's about wanting to be seen, as opposed to blending into the background."[16]

For Javier Bardem's character, Yates applied a widely colorful wardrobe that was mostly made up of pieces of Versace.[16] As for Bardem's hair, the idea was the actor's own and inspired by film producer Brian Grazer's hairdo.[17]

The film score to The Counselor was composed by Daniel Pemberton.[18] Pemberton recorded the score with a full orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in addition to integrating home-recorded guitar noises and textures.[19] "Ridley responds really well to interesting and unusual sounds," explained Pemberton on the composer-director relationship. "So as a composer who likes making unusual sounds, that's exciting. It was daunting but he was great to work with and up for experimenting. [...] He made the process a lot less scary than it should have been."[20] A soundtrack album was released digitally on October 22 and in physical forms on November 11, 2013 by Milan Records.[21]

• McCarthy, Cormac (June 10–17, 2013). "Scenes of the crime". The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 17. pp. 66–69.[22]

The Counselor grossed $17 million in the United States and Canada, and $54 million in other territories, for a total of $71 million, against a production budget of $25 million.[4]

Preliminary reports had The Counselor tracking for an $8–13 million debut in North America.[23][24] The film opened to $3.2 million in 3,336 locations on Friday and opened at #4 in the box office with just a $7.8 million over the weekend.[25]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 34% based on 221 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The Counselor raises expectations with its talented cast and creative crew—then subverts them with a wordy and clumsy suspense thriller that's mercilessly short on suspense or thrills."[26] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 48 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[27] A 2017 data analysis of Metacritic reviews by Gizmodo UK found The Counselor to be the second most critically divisive film of recent years.[28] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "D" on an A+ to F scale.[25]

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave a negative review, calling it "not a very likable or gratifying film", adding that "one is left with a very bleak ending and an only slightly less depressing sense of the waste of a lot of fine talent both behind and in front of the camera."[29] Mark Kermode listed it as number two on his Ten Worst Films of 2013.[30] Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan stated, "As cold, precise and soulless as the diamonds that figure briefly in its plot, The Counselor is an extremely unpleasant piece of business."[31] Peter Debruge of Variety criticized Cormac McCarthy's script, saying that his "first original script is nearly all dialogue, but it's a lousy story, ineptly constructed and rendered far too difficult to follow."[32]

Conversely, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four, saying,"Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Cormac McCarthy have fashioned a sexy, sometimes shockingly violent, literate and richly textured tale of the Shakespearean consequences of one man's irrevocable act of avarice" and called it "a bloody great time".[33] In addition, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times gave it a rave review, stating that "Mr. McCarthy appears to have never read a screenwriting manual in his life [...] That's a compliment."[34] Danny Leigh of the BBC programme Film 2013 praised the film, saying that "the real star is the script. What this film really is is a Cormac McCarthy audiobook with visuals by Ridley Scott. It's black as night, engrossing and masterful." He also acclaimed the performances, particularly Diaz's, and said, with regard to the negative reviews, "Movie history is littered with films that we all sneered at and we all laughed at and we all thought were terrible and the critics hated them and no-one went to see them, and then 40 years later they fetch up on programmes like this with everyone saying 'what a masterpiece!'"[35]

Scott Foundas, critic for Variety, wrote a defense of the film titled "Why The Counselor Is One of Ridley Scott's Best Films" in which he compared it to John Boorman's Point Blank (1967) and the screenplay to the work of David Mamet, Harold Pinter, and Quentin Tarantino. Foundas writes, "[The film] is bold and thrilling in ways that mainstream American movies rarely are, and its rejection suggests what little appetite there is for real daring at the multiplex nowadays."[36] Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro also praised the film, stating that the film is "a meditation of the illusory nature of normalcy and the devastation to come."[37]