13 Years Later, Ridley Scott's Greatest Quote Still Has No Equal in Thriller History

Published Nov 12, 2026, 5:04 AM EST Erik Hawkins is an award-winning writer and editor who's been obsessed with cinema since he was old enough to hold Roger Ebert's Video Home Companion in his hands. He lives in NYC, where he rabidly watches everything from the newest releases to the more odd and obscure, and regularly shares his thoughts on Letterboxd. From ghost-writing fiction and webisodes in South America to local news, trial coverage, and politics in NYC, he's rarely put down his laptop over the past 15 years. When prolific director Ridley Scott partnered with legendary novelist Cormac McCarthy, it could easily have resulted in a blockbuster or multiple Oscar wins, like McCarthy's No Country For Old Men six years prior. Instead, The Counselor proved to be box office poison in the U.S. and a target for plenty of critical and audience hatred. With time, however, the film has proven to be some kind of black-hearted masterpiece, and probably one of Scott's very best pictures. The Counselor scored a meager 34 percent with critics at Rotten Tomatoes, and received an even worse audience score, while not even breaking even on its budget at the domestic box office. But over on Letterboxd, audiences have warmed to it, with over 8,000 users giving it four stars or above and many recognizing it as an essential piece of modern cinema. The slow-paced, deliberately overwritten, theatrical, and grotesquely pessimistic cartel thriller puts some of the most unforgettable lines ever written (unsurprising, given McCarthy's unmatched literary output) into the mouths of superstars like Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, and Javier Bardem — and one of those lines happens to perfectly define the entire thriller genre. Cormac McCarthy Gave Ridley Scott the Most Horribly Beautiful Script of His Career Image via 20th Century Fox Telling the bleak story of the titular attorney (Fassbender) trying to make some quick cash by doing a deal with one of Mexico's more brutal cartels, The Counselor unfolds like a slow nightmare as its protagonist realizes he crossed an invisible line some way back, and that nothing but destruction awaits him. Every character he meets — from the cowboy-hatted middleman Westray (Pitt), to a famed jeweler, to the flamboyant drug dealer Reiner (Bardem) — expounds at length on fate, morality, sex, and the ultimate fate of humanity. Scott frames all of this elegantly and deliberately, with colors that pop contrasting with the fatalistic, intricate wordplay. Many critics blasted McCarthy's script as a poor, overly wordy and philosophical fit for the screen, but nothing he or Scott did with the film was a mistake. Scott explicitly dedicated the film to his immensely talented younger brother, Tony, who died by suicide in 2012, and McCarthy was by his side for almost the entire production. The Counselor is the definition of an auteur piece and features one of the richest, darkest scripts in thriller history. Late in the film, Fassbender's counselor realizes that he is running out of options after his deal goes bad, and he goes to a kindly (by the standards of this film) cartel boss for advice. “Actions create consequences which produce new worlds, and they’re all different," Jefe (a beautiful, brief part for Ruben Blades) warns the counselor, not only explaining the film's dark whirlpool of violence, but also the entire thriller genre. Amateur mistakes, rash decisions, sex, greed — all these things lead to “new worlds” in every thriller (look at the plots of, say the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple or noir classic Double Indemnity), where protagonists face dire odds and often violent consequences. It’s never been as explicit or as cosmically horrifying as McCarthy and Scott lay out in The Counselor, though. 'The Counselor' Deserves a Second Chance None of the "new worlds" created by Fassbender and his greed plausibly end anywhere good. While The Counselor may not offer the usual big-budget spectacle and standard plot beats that Scott fans are accustomed to, it has many of its own pleasures — aside from McCarthy's bottomless script that gives most viewers enough ideas to chew on for weeks. Scott knows just when to deploy his standard visual flair and knack for letting actors do their thing here, including an out-of-nowhere flashback depicting Reiner's ominous girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz) "fucking his car." There's a death late in the film that's subtly foreshadowed throughout — and when it suddenly happens, the futile misery and gore of it hits like a freight train. Any scene featuring Reiner and/or Malkina vibrates with a trashy digital palette unique in his filmography, including one in which they drink in the southwestern U.S. sunset alongside their pet cheetahs. And the film's many monologues are all delivered without a trace of awkwardness, its blockbuster cast making an ostensibly "talky" film downright mesmerizing. Somehow, McCarthy and Scott managed to boil the thriller genre and the idea of capitalist entropy itself down to their bloody, ragged bones in under two hours. And audiences who missed The Counselor some 13 years ago can now watch it cheaply on Prime Video and virtually any other streaming platform. Release Date November 14, 2013