Directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: Francis McDormand, George Clooney, Brad Pitt,
Other Actors of Note: John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, and J.K. Simmons
Plot: A disk containing the memoirs of a CIA agent ends up in the hands of two unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to sell it. Taken from www.imdb.com.
The Coen Brothers don't make bad movies, they make movies you don't understand. This doesn't mean you're dense or stupid, it just means you don't understand it. There is not one Coen Brothers movie that I have been displeased with that I didn't learn to enjoy on repeat viewings, this is including "Intolerable Cruelty" and "The Ladykillers" (I am one of maybe 3 people on earth that think that movie's hilarious.)
"Burn After Reading" is banking mostly off the success of last year's "No Country For Old Men" and I think that will hurt it more than anything. "Burn After Reading" is like a combination of "The Ladykillers" and "The Big Lebowski."
It's the story of a CIA agent Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) who gets demoted due to his drinking problem an quits his job. He is immediatly mocked for his choice by his ice-queen wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) who is having an affair with federal marshal Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney.)
Katie soon comes to the conclusion that it's time to leave Osbourne and takes his financial information off of his personal computer, accidently taking the memoirs of his time in the CIA he was in the process of writing.
The personal assistant of Katie's lawyer has the disk that Katie has burnt the information onto and accidently leaves it at the Hardbodies Gym where it is found by Chad (Brad Pitt) who jumps on the oppurtunity to play spy and try and blackmail Osbourne for the purpose of paying for coworker Lynda Litzke. (Frances McDormand)
Of course in typical Coen fashion, everything goes to shit and a bunch of people end up dying.
This is an all-star cast that certainly proves its clout. George Clooney plays the same type of smooth-talking paranoid delusional man he played in "Intolerable Cruelty" and "O Brother Where Art Thou" but there's also a touch of his character from "Syriana" but skewed and over-exaggerated to the point of parody. Harry is a womanizer and a paranoid coward, but he's also the only character in the entier film who seems to have even the slightest hope of being a good person.On the other side of the coin. Frances McDormand seems like the least likely person to improve herself. From the beginning, Linda is vain (she probably thinks this song is about her) and seems to care about only her looks. She even seems absolutely oblivious to the horrifically obvious come-ons of her boss Ted (Richard Jenkins.) On top of this, Linda is incredibly shallow and greedy, using Chad to try and blackmail money and when failing that going to the Russian Embassy to trade in the CIA secrets she thinks are on the disk. Frances McDormand plays the role beautifully as the anti-thesis to her character Marge Gunderson from the other Coen directed film "Fargo" where Marge was intelligent and full of depth, Linda is ignorant and about as deep as a pothole.
From the previews we are led to believe that Brad Pitt is the lead of this film. This is wrong. Brad Pitt has very little screen time in this movie and the character of Chad doesn't have very much to do with the story. This is a shame as this movie beautifully showcases Brad Pitt's acting talent. I sometimes forget that Brad Pitt is a brilliant actor when he's not busy making shit movies like "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and bouncing back and forth between two actresses I could give a fuck about. Chad is a genuine idiot, a new-age health nut who rides a bike everywhere he goes and whose entire wardrobe consists of shorts and form fitting t-shirts. Every scene with Chad is like watching a thought creep slowly across his mind and even then being barely comprehended. This movie could have been 2 hours of Brad Pitt chomping gum and dancing to his iPod and I still would have loved it.
The two weak performances here are Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich. They just come across as two very angry two dimensional characters. John Malkovich drinks and says fuck a lot and Tilda Swinton dissapprovingly criticizes everything she looks at. Neither one wowed me, though it did impress me that Tilda Swinton played a charcter more bitchy than the evil witch she played in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."
Every Coen movie has its own personal "gimmick" that really needs to be seen before one can truly understand where the movie is coming from. "Burn After Reading's" gimmick is that it's a spoof of political thrillers like "Syriana", "The Sum of All Fears", "The Bourne Identity", "Shooter", etc.
The big joke is that this is a political thriller where nothing really happens. While steeped in government secrets and espionage it's nothing more than the tale of a bunch of really dumb people fucking up each other's lives and has no effect on national security at all as shown in two scenes involving J.K Simmons as a CIA director who doesn't really care about any of this.
The beauty is that the music and cinematography doesn't seem to be in on the joke. The music is composed of low register bangs and overludes and the camera zooms in and out at extreme angles dramatically.
The ensemble cast plays off of one-another perfectly and it's interesting to see how the actions of each character affect the others. The movie takes several black comedic turns and each one is absolutely hilarious, most of them playing off the espionage angle.
The Coens are always able to inject humor into everything they do. Even Cormac McCArthy's downer "No Country For Old Men" had plenty of comedic lines (line that I might ad were not funny in the book.) The same is done here with camera work, musical cues, and especially subtle gestures and body language, particularly on the part of Brad Pitt.
It's the kind of subtle genius that I don't think most audiences will appreciate. Though the humor is a little easier to spot than it was in the vastly underrated black comedy "The Ladykillers" I think its still a bit too funny for the "No Country For Old Men" audience and a bit too subtle for the "Big Lebowski" crowd.
I reccomend several repeat viewings of this film upon its release even if you did kind of like it. Once you truly see where the movie is coming from it's brilliant, witty, and hilarious. Otherwise you'll probably just be scratching your head and wondering why anybody likes it.
"Burn After Reading" is a fine addition to the Coen Brothers library of modern movie masterpieces. You may not appreciate it at first but don't give up on it, keep watching it and it will grow on you.I give "Burn After Reading" a 5 out of 5. Go see it.
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