Ridley Scott Plans The Counselor

[Tequilla]

Kingdom of Heaven is a good film , absolutely gorgeous to look at , and miles better than gladiator , but the problem isn't only Bloom. Yeah , he's stiff as hell. But Scott deals with the conflict between muslims and christians with a breeze that is hard not to find almost funny. It's extremely caricatural . The villains also suffer from the same thing. raynal of chatillon and guy of lusignan characterizations are so caricatural , that its hard to take the whole thing seriously. Which is a shame , cause the film does so many things right.

 

[Eddie Dean]

I don't think Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to be taken 100% seriously. It's an old Hollywood styled epic painted with broad strokes and stock characters.

 

[terry78]

Well, he sure fooled us then.

 

[Rocketman]

I don't think Ridley gets a free pass for the rest of his life simply because he made two masterpieces (Alien and Blade Runner). And believe me, they ARE masterpieces and I love them both dearly. They were both extremely influential to hundreds (thousands?) of movies that came after, and we probably wouldn't have the "same" Christopher Nolan we have now without those films.

... But people speak of Ridley Scott in such high regard as if to say that he's one of the greatest directors who ever lived. And it's simply not true. Even Nolan speaks with that implication and I want to slap him (and he's one of my favorite directors).

The term "one of the greatest directors who ever lived" is reserved for Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg... guys who, while they might have made plenty of duds (I don't think Kubrick ever did), they didn't just make two masterpieces and that's it. If we can throw away the term so loosely, why doesn't anyone know who the hell Victor Fleming is?

Victor Fleming directed both The Wizard of Oz AND Gone With The Wind, and both were released the same year (1939). Yet his existence is seemingly erased from the cosmos. Surely the guy who directed these two masterpieces should be regarded as one of the greatest ever, right?

So, I don't get it. At the end of the day, it doesn't really bother me, because Kubrick and Hitchcock are ultimately the two greatest directors who ever lived (for me), and if someone wants to blindly throw out such a prestigious label to someone who has two great films under his belt, have at it.

 

[Hunter Rider]

IMO, Ridley's GREAT, classic movies:

Alien
Blade Runner
Thelma & Louise
Gladiator

His GOOD movies:

The Duellists
Black Rain
Kingdom of Heaven (Director's Cut)
Black Hawk Down
American Gangster

His DECENT movies:

Matchstick Men
White Squall
Body of Lies
Prometheus
Hannibal

His DUDS:

1492: A Conquest of Paradise
Robin Hood
G.I. Jane
A Good Year
The Counselor (going by reviews, haven't seen it yet)
Legend

I feel like people often over-state his ratio of duds vs. solid work just because his best days are obviously behind him.

I might rearrange one or two in the listings but overall I agree.

 

[dustbros]

Robin Hood had an amazing script and one of the most sought after until Scott came and completely ruined it.

amazing? that was the csi robin hood, nothing but a parody with a tv show scale.
love triangle among robin, marion and the sheriff?! lol
deserved page one rewrite. loved Ridleys new take on Robins identity although had some issues like too much going on to deal with.

 

[Tequilla]

I don't think Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to be taken 100% seriously. It's an old Hollywood styled epic painted with broad strokes and stock characters.

Ok. But stock characters ain't villains that could transition straight to a Disney movie.
​

 

[Tequilla]

Legend a Dud ? Hell no. That's one of Ridley's best. Best looking fantasy film ever , by the way.

Tim Curry is amazing

 

[Octoberist]

The Counslor was a movie I wanted to like..but there's zero tension. Zero.

Unlike the Cormac's adaptation of No Country for Old Men. Unlike 12 Years a Slave.

I think it's the fault lies with the screenplay by Cormac himself and Ridley's direction. Laura should've been the emotional weight of the film. I wish her character was explored more and what she thought of this underground world. But no..In fact the one character who had any sort of development was Brad Pitt's Westay.

Also instead of being strange, the film's tone was more cartoony. There's a fine line between the two and movie never manages to create a captivating weird world. It opted for the more buffoonish road.

Grade: C-

 

[Schlosser85]

I completely agree about Guy and Reynald in Kingdom of Heaven being completely one-dimensional mustache-twirling villains.

Which was disappointing after the effort Gladiator obviously made toward making Commodus three-dimensional and conflicted at times. Yea, he does terrible things, but he's also kind of this sad miserable lonely little man-child, and a lot of his power hunger and you could argue even his incestuous lust for his sister comes from his lifelong craving for love and affection that he's never gotten from anyone.

Hell, you could make a case that Commodus has more character development and dimension than the hero Maximus.

And then Guy and Reynald are like twirling their jet black mustaches and giggling evilly as they tie Muslims to train tracks.

 

[Zeus]

Maybe they were just simply that bad of a person during that time. Being born in royalty and have a *****e personality could be common.

There are people who are pure evil from the onset...See 12 years a slave, Edwin Epps character.

 

[Schlosser85]

There are people who are just plain rotten human beings...but I think there's still a difference between that and being portrayed so mustache-twirling.

Look at Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List. Rotten and vile to the core, but still not a caricature like Guy and Reynald came across.

Just my opinion.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

There are people who are just plain rotten human beings...but I think there's still a difference between that and being portrayed so mustache-twirling.

Look at Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List. Rotten and vile to the core, but still not a caricature like Guy and Reynald came across.

Just my opinion.

To be fair, they have some great mustaches. How could you not twirl them?

 

[gwynplaine]

Alien
The Duellists
Gladiator
Thelma and Louise

 

[Donut]

The commercial that repeated on the air with the ending "Have You Been Bad" annoyed me greatly. So for that reason alone. I am glad that this movie bombed

 

[Loki882]

Yeah, this is the most overrated director of all-time, without question. Anyone who says a thing about Nolan has no idea what they're talking about, lol. I've never seen a continuous string of movies this bad: A Good Year, American Gangster, Body of Lies, Robin Hood, Prometheus, The Counselor. Not to mention Hannibal and G.I. Jane? Good god.

Sorry, but I don't agree AT ALL that American Gangster was a bad movie. Was it a masterpiece, no, but it was certainly good.

 

[Tequilla]

5 cyphers talking with each another. Thats , sadly the movie. Im nobody to criticize the work of one of the most accomplished writers but...not for one second was i engaged or interested to dwell in the cryptic nature of the movie.

 

[Octoberist]

I think it's just that Cormac wrote a bad screenplay. He's a great writer, but he's too close to the material.

It's like when Stephan King is producing his own stuff, you would think 'OH it's a no-brainer'. But the stuff that King is directly involved with tends to be crap.

 

[hammerhedd11]

I don't really see how his writing in The Counselor is any more cryptic or philosophical than anything else he's written before. If anything, Chigurh is one of his more symbolic and straight up supernatural characters and people went crazy over him like no other.

 

[Octoberist]

I know that. But is it good, compared to the other stuff he has written?

Or maybe it was just Ridley Scott's directing didn't mesh well with the writing even it should've have.

 

[hammerhedd11]

I was responding more to Tequilla's claim that all the characters were cyphers. It is one thing to just have the opinion that the screenplay was just flat out bad, which I respect, but a large majority of the critical reaction seemed to center on that the characters did not act so much as real people as they did personifications of ideas, and most of them seemed to consider that a flaw on its own, not in the execution exactly, but just on that concept alone, which I find to be especially strange considering McCarthy has been writing that way from the start of his career, so it's weird to act like this movie is the black sheep of his writing. It's led me to believe that most critics are only familiar with No Country For Old Men and The Road, which is fine, but it's sort of misleading for them to criticize the style of The Counselor's screenplay when it's nothing new for him.

 

[Octoberist]

Oh okay. That's why I was confused.

Trust me, I really wanted to like The Counselor but it didn't work for me. And I love Cormac's style.

 

[hammerhedd11]

Oh for sure, and I think that's completely valid. I'm not a fan of everything Cormac has put out, but I was just perplexed at certain reactions that weren't about the execution of the style (which is your reaction), but simply about the style itself, especially one which is not exactly new. I see a lot of people equating styles they are not fans of with it being bad, which I don't think is fair. There are tons of directors and writers whom style I don't particularly enjoy, but I can still respect that they are executed well. It's only when a certain style is executed poorly, or doesn't do anything to move the themes or story along that I think it is safe to take issue with it.

 

[Octoberist]

Yeah if its done poorly its' crap. I think 'Only God Forgives' had a Cormac style but it didn't work.

Meanwhile, True Detectives has Cormac like dialogue and a cynic view of the world, and it's golden.

 

[Tequilla]

I don't really see how his writing in The Counselor is any more cryptic or philosophical than anything else he's written before. If anything, Chigurh is one of his more symbolic and straight up supernatural characters and people went crazy over him like no other.

The problem is not the level of crypticism , its how it is presented. The execution.Not because characters are the voice of the authors ideas. I have nothing against that. Quite the contrary , the message is fascinating even if it's not unique in Cormac Mcc's views. It's just that it's very clunky in how it progresses. Which generates an immense fatigue watching this cyphers behaving.

You probably put this in the Coen bros hands (im talking script revision and direction) and you get a very different movie. Retaining the core of the Counselor pathos.