"i'd like to forget about malkina f**king my car." me too, javier bardem. me too. ridley scott's the counselor has all the ingredients for a truly great movie. scott is a world-class director and he has a script from the man behind the books from which the road and no country for old men were adapted. to top it off he has a phenomenal cast that includes michael fassbender, the aforementioned bardem, penelope cruz, brad pitt, cameron diaz, rosie perez, natalie dormer, bruno ganz and goran visijnic. the talented dariusz wolski is behind the camera as the director of photography and two-time oscar winner pietro scalia edited it all together. so why does it go so wrong? how is a film about a drug deal gone wrong featuring several brutal deaths so dreadfully boring? a big part of it is the pretentious dialogue which tries to make this thriller existential. it fails miserably on that front. it feels like mccarthy is trying to add a healthy dose of david lynch flavor into his usual style but the two parts just don't congeal. amidst the dull dialogue, which is delivered by actors who appear largely bored by the material, you have barely fleshed-out characters who sometimes lack names altogether and hilariously bizarre moments like the aforementioned car sex scene with diaz. there are a couple of cool moments in the counselor but by and large it neither entertains or means much of anything.