'Burn After Reading' Movie Review

An exercise in barely controlled lunacy is the best way I can describe the Coen Brothers' return to comedy with Burn After Reading. The central characters are a bunch of silly people who go out of their way to get themselves involved in ridiculous situations. The plot's a bizarre blend of slapstick comedy and spy caper, with some sex thrown in to really liven things up.

What it all boils down to is Burn After Reading's just a goofball comedy that, had it not been conceived by the filmmakers who brought us last year's big Oscar winner No Country for Old Men as well as a few other critically acclaimed films, and if it didn't have George Clooney and Brad Pitt playing the lead idiots, Burn After Reading might not have generated much interest at all. It's silly and completely forgettable, yet still kind of fun in a brainless sort of way. Is it $10 a ticket worth of fun? Maybe, if you're looking for pure escapist fare that requires little or no energy to absorb.

The Players

Brad Pitt plays Chad Feldheimer, a clueless gym employee with a bizarre streaked hairdo and a toned body continuously in motion. Chad's not a bad guy, he's just a mimbo. His supervisor is Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), a woman so caught up with her desire for a perfect body she's ready to undergo four medical procedures if only the insurance company would come to their senses and approve them. Linda and Chad are friends and between the two there exists barely half a functioning brain.

Other key players in the Burn After Reading game are alcoholic ex-CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a bitter man who believes his tell-all memoir will set the world on fire. Tilda Swinton plays Osborne's iceberg of a wife, Katie, a woman so hard and unfeeling she could take an icepick to the chest without leaving a mark. Coen Brothers' regular George Clooney is Federal Marshal Harry Pfarrer, a lactose intolerant floor-admiring sexaholic who's sleeping with Katie (amongst other women) while married to a children's book author.

The Story

A custodian at the gym finds an unlabeled disc on the floor in the women's room. Chad pops it into a computer and is smart enough to know he's looking at sensitive documents. Linda thinks they can use the disc to make money (remember, she needs those operations). The disc, which Katie burned in order to have all the inside info on their financial positions so she'd know what to ask for in a divorce, contains Cox's work-in-progress memoir as well as financial information. Chad somehow connects the dots, and he and Linda call up Cox believing he'll fork over some cash to the Good Samaritans who found his missing disc.

But nothing goes as planned. Cox gets combative and Chad takes a hard shot to the nose. Linda decides crashing her car into Cox's and then heading to the Russian Embassy to sell off secrets is the way to go. And Harry…well Harry winds up on the same internet dating site as Linda and without knowing it he's sleeping with a woman who's blackmailing the husband of the other woman he's screwing around with. And the folks at the CIA have no idea what's going on, but they do know Cox is involved and somehow the Russians are in on things. And if you think the plot is clear as mud, you're right - that's the point of the entire film.

The Cast

McDormand spends the entire movie cringing over her body parts; husband Joel Coen definitely didn't take it easy on her vanity while crafting the role. McDormand is the heart and soul of the film, the character the audience can support throughout the messy proceedings. Pitt is just plain fun to watch as he gets into the part of a pretty boy airhead, and his buddy Clooney suffers the indignities of another quirky character with good grace and a lot of gusto. But the real standout is Malkovich who does an impressive job of playing things real while everyone around him seems to be in and out of cartoon mode.

The Bottom Line

The Coens are so hot right now they could probably sell the idea for a comedy involving the changing of fish tank water. And if the owners of the fish were played by Hollywood's hottest actors, there would be a bidding war for distribution rights to the film. Combine the Coens, Pitt, and Clooney with the lack of good films in theaters right now and the prospect of heavy dramas lurking just around the corner, and Burn After Reading should find a receptive audience ready to crack open its pages.

Burn After Reading is no Fargo and it can't hold a candle to Raising Arizona, but it's better than Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers (which I admit after seeing again I gave a higher review to than I should have – I must have been in just the right mood for a weird dark comedy when the film screened for critics). The film meanders here and there, and not enough time is spent with Pitt or Clooney's characters. Overall, Burn After Reading is a check your brain at the door sort of comedy and one that you won't devote a single brain cell to analyzing after you leave the theater. If that's the sort of movie you've been aching for, then it's just entertaining enough to be worth a couple hours of your time.

GRADE: B-

Burn After Reading was directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and is rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content and violence.

Theatrical Release: September 12, 2008