The Counselor plot analysis

Trying to figure out what happens to the shipment of drugs in The Counselor (2013, Ridley Scott) has become a bit of an obsession for me. The biggest questions are how early did MALKINA (Cameron Diaz) get involved in manipulating the outcome of the cargo and how exactly does it benefit her? 
     For a maguffin it seems easy enough to follow. A couple of beaners in Juárez drive the truck across the border. They park it at a septic plant, then remove a small electronic device that they give to a man in a green baseball cap who pays one of the men for it. At a roadside cafe, Green Ballcap hands the device to the GREEN HORNET (Richard Cabral), which is all observed from a distance by JAMIE (Sam Spruell) and a lipreader. In the first of several beheadings in The Counselor, Jamie lops off the Green Hornet’s head. Afterwards, Jamie has a phonecall with Malkina letting her know he got it (the device).
     Once Jamie and SECOND MAN (Richard Brake) retrieve the truck containing the drugs, they’re hijacked and murdered by cartel. So, the 625 kilos ends its journey in Chicago. And that’s pretty much it. So why ask oneself about it any further? When Malkina is on the phone with another voice (this time we never hear), she says she always knew where the truck was going. We also know that she has all of REINER’S (Javier Bardem) rooms and phones tapped and listens in on all of his conversations. 
 
So what do you think? If the cocaine has a street value of $20 million, then why would Malkina implicate the COUNSELOR (Michael Fassbender) and Reiner in a conspiracy that results in the cartel eliminating them before they can flip it? And if it’s a finder’s fee she’s collecting from the cartel, wouldn’t they be highly unlikely to trust her, especially considering the whole motif of “they don’t believe in coincidences?” I mean the easy answer points to the cartel had a homing device that led them to the truck. 
     Upon the film’s conclusion, Malkina has WESTRAY (Brad Pitt) assassinated (you guessed it, by beheading) and hacks into his bank accounts, but if this was her motive the entire time, then was the whole conspiracy/hijacking even necessary? It doesn’t seem like too big of a coincidence that Malkina had forethought stealing the drug shipment before finding out that the Counselor had RUTH (Rosie Perez) as a client, and afterwards hedged her bets then wisely walks away. (Yet Malkina's line “I’m still in” being read as her profiting from the delivery is very difficult to comprehend unless she's talking about going after Westray as an idea she came up with after the jackpot she got into.)

     And this all seems to fit in with Cormac McCarthy’s morality theme of the weak falling prey to the strong. It’s the arc of the movie: the Counselor travels to Juárez to discover for himself that death has no meaning, then live the remainder of his life without LAURA (Penélope Cruz); and the real tragedy that after her death, he has no meaning. Another thing I just noticed for the first time is as Laura's headless corpse is dumped into the landfill there's a black trash bag that tumbles after it that is roughly the size of a human head. Not only is The Counselor so fun because of its confusing plot, but also because of how foreshadowcore it is. Upon rewatch there is so much dialogue that not only predicts, but metaphysically ponders connected respective plot points. The one I get such a big kick out of is when Westray talks about “…what happens when the surety becomes the more attractive holding?” sums it all up. But when the Counselor gives his lady the engagement ring and he says he’ll love her till the day he dies, to which she replies “me first,” that’s one morbid perversely prescient joke.

Nature's Friend Part Two One Plastic Soldier

It was hot. We were in Lone Pine, fresh off a few days camping and hiking up Mt. Langley, and it was hot. We'd done a favor for some folks we met on the trail, driving them from a trailhead to their car to save them a couple days of hiking they had decided or maybe realized they weren't up for, and we'd taken ourselves out for the traditional massive meal cooked by somebody who wasn't us, competently accessorized by a beverage buffet. As we prepared to make our ways back to the Ford Focus, I craftily noted that my plan was to take the ice cubes with me, and put them in my beloved Nalgene, even then heating in the car, probably to near boiling.

"You know Nalgenes kind of suck, right?" asked Noodles. Aghast, I protested: "T-that bottle is my friend. It's been so many places with me! It's served me well, it's never let me down!"

She wasn't convinced. Anyway, that's a story about one Nalgene, one that's been up Langley, up much of Whitney, through Desolation Wilderness, and other places my lapsed indoor kid ass has dragged it. Here is another story. And here is a third:

For many years, I've had a 32-ounce Nalgene in the work fridge, so I can have a nice cold glass of fridge water any time I want. Since I like my water cold, it's not uncommon for me to fill up the bottle and throw it in the freezer, so as to get it colder faster. (Feel free to adopt this trick for your own life.) Since I am forgetful, I have long had a post-it note on my work desk, reading "You have a Nalgene in the freezer."

I recently got a new desk at work. I swept off all the things on the surface of the old one and forgot about them. I forgot, I guess, about a lot of things.

The other day, I got to work, in the mood for some fridge water. I opened the fridge, and saw no bottle. "Odd," I thought. Then I opened the freezer. "Shit," I thought.

(Look what they—well, I—did to my toy.)

This is far from the first time I'd frozen this bottle, but it will be the last. I'm fairly unhappy to lose the stickers: Tabs, The Best Show, etc. I'm annoyed that I fucked up: I used to take a lot of pride in my memory, and as that capacity degrades with age, the space freed up by less pride and less capacity is more than overflowing with new shame. In this case, shame about breaking a useful tool that I had enjoyed and employed for a long time. Farewell, blue Nalgene. The world shall look on your like again.

(Poor fuckin' guy.)

(Our sick culture insists that the greatest grief be reserved for the military, no matter how many ways there are to serve, so I must borrow these pretty sentiments for a bottle that served and served, but was never a soldier.)