Cormac McCarthy and Ridley Scott’s joint project The Counselor shocks to sell. Brutal imagery and non-stop sex banter aside, a main selling angle is in the exotic cats. Offered as colorful metaphors, the cheetahs – to say nothing of the film – quickly become blunt and unwieldy. Meant to convey, as Cameron Diaz’s puerile character explains, examples of killing “a quarry with elegance”, they are realized only as gimmickry, much like Diaz’s cheetah tattoo. “It is our faintness of heart that has driven us to the edge of ruin. And the slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining.” Hopefully not words for a sequel.