First official images for THE COUNSELOR; plus read an excerpt from Cormac McCarthy's script!

While the name of Ridley Scott may have been all that was necessary for me to put up with an army of noisy popcorn munchers a decade ago, the truth is that the famed director has lost a lot of his street cred due to a series of just okay-ish films. That being said, he would have to put in a concerted effort to completely screw up The Counselor, a thriller written by acclaimed novelist Cormac McCarthy, and boasting a cast that sports so much talent that it gives them Super Saiyan hair (you’ll understand later).

We got the first riveting teaser trailer a few days ago, and now we not only get our first series of official pics looking at this uber-skilled group of actors, but also get to read an excerpt from McCarthy’s actual screenplay.

The film’s plot is being kept on the DL, with the only revealed to us that far is that it concerns a respected lawyer (Michael Fassbender) in the American Southwest who gets caught up in a crazy drug deal that spins out of control. Like Javier Bardiem’s hair. Now we get an elaborated version of one of the trailer’s most memorable scenes (courtsey of The New Yorker) for your reading enjoyment (just don’t shout at me about spoilers if you do though).

And just a warning: If you’ve never read one of Cormac McCarthy’s punctuation-less novels, then this wall of text may come as a bit of shock. Brace yourself…

the septic-tank truck on a two-lane blacktop road in central Texas. A late-model sedan is following it, two men in the car. The passenger in the sedan plugs a flashing red roof light into the cigarette lighter in the dash and reaches out the window and places the light on the roof of the car. Then he takes a black box off the seat and holds it at the window and turns it on and it begins to emit a police-siren sound. The septic-tank truck slows and pulls over onto the verge and comes to a halt. The sedan pulls in some distance behind it and the two men get out, putting on white Stetson hats. They are dressed in boots and tan slacks and white shirts and wear automatic sidearms. The driver of the truck—the wire man—watches them in the rearview mirror. The boots of the co-driver of the truck are moving back along the passenger side of the truck. The driver starts the truck and pulls away. The two men in the road have almost reached the truck and they draw their pistols and run forward. The co-driver of the truck is now lying in the bar ditch, and when the truck clears his position the two men in the road are exposed directly in front of him and he opens fire on them with a pistol, dropping one of them dead in the road and wounding the other in the leg. The wounded man dives into the ditch on the other side of the road. The truck has come to a stop again, angled slightly toward the road, and the driver opens fire on the wounded man with a pistol from the truck window. The wounded man presses himself flat in the ditch and takes careful aim with his pistol and shoots the driver in the head. The driver’s pistol clatters into the road. The co-driver in the ditch sees the pistol fall. He studies the far side of the road and then backs down into the ditch and crouches and runs along the ditch toward the truck. The wounded man sees the man’s back moving along the ditch and he stands and fires three rounds after him. The last round hits the tank of the truck and brown sewage starts to spout from the hole. The co-driver reaches the truck and opens the door and clambers in over the body slumped on the floor and, crouching over the body, he reaches and pushes the clutch to the floor with his hand and drops the shifter into first gear and reaches and releases the emergency brake. He pushes down the accelerator with one hand and lets the clutch out with the other and the truck moves forward into the road. The wounded man climbs out of the ditch and hobbles back to the car and gets in and shuts the door. He lays the pistol on the seat and reaches under the seat and takes out an AR-15 machine pistol with a twenty-round clip and pushes off the safety and starts the car and pulls out down the road after the truck. The truck has wandered to the far side of the road and the car pulls up along the passenger side of the truck and the wounded man opens fire with the AR-15, emptying the clip into the door of the truck. Then he backs away and pulls to the verge and sits watching. The truck veers slowly off the road in front of him and rolls down into the bar ditch, where it tilts up onto two wheels and balances for a moment and then drops back onto all four wheels and sits there in silence. In the rearview mirror, the man in the car can see another car approaching, very small on the long stretch of blacktop road. He can see the pistol lying in the road and, beyond that, the dead body. The approaching car is shimmering in the heat waves off the road. The man’s trouser leg is dark with blood to his boot. He places his hand on his thigh and leans forward slightly in pain. He turns the AR-15 on the seat and ejects the empty clip and reaches under the seat and gets hold of a small canvas bag and puts it in his lap and unzips it and takes out a loaded clip and loads the AR-15 and pushes back the slide with the heel of his hand. The approaching car has slowed. Now it stops. It turns sideways in the road and backs up and swings around and heads back the way it came. The wounded man has opened the door and he steps out and levels the AR-15 and opens fire on the fleeing car. He empties the clip and then lowers the gun and stands watching. The car slows and drifts off the road and down into the bar ditch and comes to a stop. The man reaches into the car and gets another clip and reloads the AR-15 and turns and goes down the bank to the truck.

And after all those words, I need me some pikchas! So courtesy of EW, here are some new shots of the main cast. I’ll give you one guess as to which one is my favourite. If your guess doesn’t contain the names Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz, you’re wrong.

The Counsellor also stars Brad Pitt, Dean Norris, John Leguizamo and Natalie Dormer and will be released on October 25, 2013.

Last Updated: June 28, 2013