The volume of award wins or nominations a cast and crew has in their past isn’t really a barometer of how things will turn out should a cavalcade of prestigious names be brought together for the same project, but that still doesn’t excuse just how badly The Counselor turned out.
Even if you rattle off the names involved who don’t have at least one Academy Award nomination to their name, then we’re still talking about a crime thriller penned by No Country for Old Men and The Road author Cormac McCarthy that stars Cameron Diaz, Natalie Dormer, Edgar Ramirez, Toby Kebbell, and others.
Then, when you factor in four-time Oscar-nominated Ridley Scott directing the likes of two-time nominee Michael Fassbender, four-time nominees, one-time winners, and real-life couple Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, along with seven-time nominee and two-time winner Brad Pitt, then you begin to see how badly it failed to do justice to the sum of its parts.
We haven’t even mentioned Oscar-nommed cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, composer Daniel Pemberton, or the four nods and one victory for editor Pietro Scalia, either, which makes you wonder how on earth The Counselor couldn’t fly any higher on Rotten Tomatoes than the 34 and 24 percent approval ratings it was respectively awarded by critics and audiences.
Probably because it’s not very good, with the labyrinthine tale of a hotshot lawyer desperate for cash being pulled into the world of drug-running easily one of the most disappointing movies of the last decade when it comes to its talent-to-turnout ratio.
Big names always draw ’em in on streaming, though, even if there’s sure to be a lot of viewers wishing they hasn’t wasted their time after FlixPatrol outed The Counselor as one of iTunes’ top-viewed titles.