In the view of Nick “Action Man” Clement, Anton Corbijn‘s The American, Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and David Fincher‘s Se7en are spiritual brethren of Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor.
“Much like in The American, Scott and screenwriter Cormac McCarthy smartly subvert the audiences’ preconceived genre expectations: the chase has to be here, it needs to end there, this character needs to be killed by that character, etc. And as in Peckinpah’s down and dirty Garcia, the narrative in The Counselor comes to a rational (however disturbing and bleak) conclusion that has to be considered as ‘audience-unfriendly’ or ‘morally reprehensible.’ [But] it’s not the job of cinema or of filmmakers to only tell stories about the morally just and dignified.