Watch on Disney+: What if this hated movie was one of the greatest thrillers of our time?

SignRidley Scott’s “sick” thriller

It’s one of those films that time does justice to. Eleven years after the release of the crime thriller Signthe film by Ridley Scott criticized and judged a failure, we are not there yet, but the more time passes the more its rehabilitation takes shape. How could this film, with a superstar cast composed of Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, directed by Ridley Scott and written by the great writer Cormac McCarthy, receive such negative reviews?

Note 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, deemed unpleasant, boring, too talkative, extremely dark, cold and with an advertising aesthetic, without suspense, Sign (the counselor in the original version) makes its budget of 25 million dollars profitable $71 million of recipes in the world. But on the other hand this is the only positive point of the film, that is Ridley Scott’s Lowest Scorein competition with A fantastic year.

A Texas lawyer, nicknamed “the Counselor”, decides to go over to the other side and work for a drug cartel that operates on the border between the United States and Mexico. The drugs are transported in trucks and one of them is robbed. However, this robbery involves a former client of the lawyer. For “the Counselor” it is the beginning of a chain of dramatic events in which he will have to face the cruel reality of the world of the cartels.

A writer’s film…

Michael Fassbender plays this lawyer, whose name we will never know, involved in the hell of drug trafficking. Associated with Reinera whimsical entrepreneur and trafficker played by Javier Bardem, as well as a mysterious middleman named Westray Played by Brad Pitt, he is as confident as he is naive. Already rich, seductive, living a perfect love story with Laura (Penélope Cruz), his luxurious world where everything is easy will suddenly become a hell. And the word is weak…

Cruel, nihilistic and desperate, Sign surprised – and sorry – by his extremely cold and unspectacular from the film “Cartel”. The film, in fact, is composed of long sequences of dialogue, without any real transition from one to the other, and in which the characters discuss their fantasies and the reality of what they are experiencing.

But there’s a problem. In 2013, podcasting hasn’t become a mainstream format yet, and probably only so. Sign they came out today and they would be acclaimed the length and apparent complexity of his dialogues. In fact, Sign It is the first film written by Cormac McCarthy, who is also an executive producer. It is therefore a film structured by the world and practice of the writer’s languagethat is, exchanges between characters crushed by a dark, violent, irremediably dark and tragic world.

…and a philosophical thriller

Fans of shootings and crime thrillers will therefore be in for a treat, as in the world of Sign the police institution is absent and the characters seem to push away as much as possible from themselves the violence that, paradoxically, they create. And this until it suddenly reaches them…

If you listen carefully to what the characters say to each other from the beginning of the film, you will immediately understand the mechanisms of the film. Everyone the lawyer talks to advises him not to get into drug trafficking, because he is not ready to accept this reality. Much more than a police thriller, Cartel is actually a philosophical filmwhich deals with the world of drug trafficking actions and their consequences.

And it is precisely on this point that Ridley Scott’s film has a immense challenge note: how, in cinema, the reign of suspension of disbelief, of actions without consequences and dramatic shortcuts, manage to make the very foundation of reality – the opposite of fiction – that is, that actions necessarily have consequences?

Two memorable sequences and a heartbreaking one

There’s still some show left Signthat Ridley Scott stages in his style that greatly explores mythology and advertising aesthetics. Then there is the famous scene of “catfish“, in which Cameron Diaz’s Machiavellian and ultra-cynical character, Malkinamakes love to Reiner’s car while rubbing herself against his windshield. A sequence narrated by Reiner himself, disoriented and terrified by this action.

There is also an extremely violent and graphic sequence of a mechanical decapitation in the middle of the road, which we won’t say anything else about here so as not to reveal too much of the film’s ending.

Finally there is the sequence masterlyduring which the cartel leader (Rubén Blades), in a philosophical and poetic dialogue, explains to the lawyer that he must accept his new reality and resign himself to it. In this sequence, at a certain point he utters a complex but significant sentence: “The world in which you try to repair the mistakes you have made is different from the world in which they were made.Explanation: The lawyer’s mistakes have transformed his life, his world, and in this new world they cannot be undone.

In this heartbreaking sequence, Michael Fassbender is in tears in his car somewhere in Mexico, and the cartel leader is at home, in his luxurious house, drinking tea and getting ready for a nap. When the lawyer really notices”life won’t bring him back“, we then hear the strings of the “sad” theme of the magnificent composition by Daniel Pemberton for Sign.

Signgreat movie today

Too violent beneath his almost polite surface, too desperate, too talkative and too demanding… Sign undoubtedly suffers from its very (too?) literary writing, to which Ridley Scott conventionally brings his staging and his refined aesthetics. So, without a doubt, the agreement between these two universes is imperfect. But not to the point of canceling intense and very successful performances by its main castespecially Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt.

Not even to the point of deleting it the terribly boring and sticky atmosphere that comes to crack the luxurious veneer of the lawyer’s world, before destroying it. So there is a bet to be made: if Sign It may have seemed completely out of place, out of fashion and an “anomaly” in Hollywood cinema in the early 2010s, perhaps today, in 2024, when the world is obsessed with excess wealth and prone to inconsistency of its leaders and its powerful, its aesthetics and its discourse have never been so relevant…

Source: Cine Serie

Ray

Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.