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Bookmark this pageBurn After Reading (2008)
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Synopsis
The Coens return to a lighter, glossier vein with this comedy drama about a missing CIA memoir. George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton star.
Movie review
From Time Out London
With their hangdog mugs now nestled against the bosom of mainstream Hollywood, indie-crossover darlings the Coen brothers have concocted another of their Hawkesian screwball quickies in which an ensemble of beautiful A-listers merrily play the fool. Already a hit in the US, ‘Burn After Reading’ is a snappy, confident, lightly satirical and stridently mischievous entertainment that arrives on the back of their sand-blasted lament for times past, ‘No Country for Old Men’.But while the tenor may have changed, the madcap template is very much in place. The rub: a disc containing the memoirs of recently dismissed, mid-level CIA operative Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich at his high-falutin, foul-mouthed best) floats into the hands of two gormless gym employees-turned-recreational grifters, plastic surgery-obsessed singleton Linda (Frances McDormand) and soft liberal airhead Chad (Brad Pitt, right). After an inevitably calamitous attempt at bribery (‘We’ve got your secret shit!’), the pair find themselves cack-handedly doorstepping the Russian embassy in search of a swifter pay-off. Fold into that a parallel story where George Clooney’s rubber-faced philanderer, Harry, tries to juggle semi-serious flings with Linda and Osbourne’s flamed-haired ex, Katie (Tilda Swinton).
Considering the Coens’ past form with intricately plotted farces (‘Raising Arizona’, ‘Fargo’, ‘The Big Lebowski’), this does feel effortless to the point that you might imagine they could have scribbled it on the back of a napkin between breakfast and brunch. Yet, beneath its deadpan façade, nimble direction and robust photography (care of Emmanuel Lubezki) lies a cheerily nihilistic (misanthropic even?) work which paints its characters as preening, self-obsessed, idiot savants who wear stupid clothes, habitually lie, misuse the internet for dating and wouldn’t know a conscience from a Coke bottle. Even at their lowest ebb (2004’s ‘The Ladykillers’) the brothers’ palpable affection for old movies injected some humanity into the overly sardonic proceedings; but here, even the movies are bad, as seen in their snarkily anodyne film-within-a-film, ‘Coming Up Daisy’.
The audience are, in the end, placed in the boots of JK Simmons’s flummoxed CIA chief who, having been nervously informed of the preceding antics, finds it tough to fathom how these people could have been so damn stupid. It’s possibly the Coens’ least romantic film, which makes the cynical tone a tough pill to swallow, but chances are that you’ll be too busy hooting and chuckling idiotically to notice.
Author: David Jenkins
Time Out London Issue 1991, Oct 16 – 22, 2008
User reviews of this film
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- tbone said...
- Posted on Oct 26 2008 14:35 gg
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- Jordan said...
- Posted on Oct 26 2008 09:58 Brad Pitts character was great and when he got shot was a thrilling part of the movie but for the first half hour of the movie i would rather of watched paint dry
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- Pete said...
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Posted on Oct 26 2008 08:53
Ossie Cox (John Malkovich) is an inept intelligence analyst for an inept CIA, he's married to a hard nosed business bitch who aims to divorce him after the loss of his job. Fitness trainer Linda Litkze (Frances McDormand) desperately wants to pump up her flat chested image but doesn't have the cash
until she stumbles on a disk containing some of
Ossie's ineffectual CIA analysis.
Litkze relentlessly tries to sell the disk to the highest bidder; dragging reluctant work mates into an achingly involved and very funny plot with mystified Russians, a confused CIA and random divorce lawyers. The hapless Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and the over sexed Harry Pfarrer (a bearded George Clooney) add style and pulling power to a clever comedy that entertains long after you leave the movie house - the closing scenes of the CIA trying to work out what the hell went down is priceless. - Report as inappropriate
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- valerie said...
- Posted on Oct 25 2008 18:41 I loved this film, one of the best I have seen in a while. Witty script and the story kept me intererested. I have fallen asleep in the cinema frequently. The acting was fantastic and I loved the idea of loads of stories in one...
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- UK said...
- Posted on Oct 25 2008 13:18 for people who might suffer with alzheimers -both impared recent and long-term memory recall -errors of judgment ,no aesthetic sense and delusions of grandeur,with auditory and visual hallucinations -all signifying DEMENTATUM VISITATUM
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- Lisa H said...
- Posted on Oct 25 2008 11:37 The actual story is weak & all over the place. However, Brad Pitt's character was so funny, he made me cry with laughter. It always surprises me how well he can do humour, but he can! He plays the role of a brainless healthfreak, who simply can't think for himself - he's so dense - but he is hillarious to watch. Brad didn't enter the film for about the first half hour, until then, the film was boring, & I was considering going to the pub instead. In a nutshell, for me the film was only worth watching when Pitt's character was in it, when he wasn't, I found it tedious & boring.
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- DV said...
- Posted on Oct 25 2008 01:22 So it's -less entertainment, is it? That's mindless, without the mind. Hmmm. Thanks. Go see it, unless you have no attention span...or, of course you have no attention span.
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- UK said...
- Posted on Oct 24 2008 23:40 Some movies are mindless entertainment -this is minus the mind -never mind you can save it for the blockbuster vid list for the most boring day of your entire winter of 2008-pseudintellectuals rise and shine for the most over-rated crap ever
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- DV said...
- Posted on Oct 24 2008 15:56 Ask yourself this before you go: did you like the film, Men in Black? If the answer is yes, then don't go to see B.A.R.
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- tonia said...
- Posted on Oct 24 2008 15:36 saw this with my 22 year old son last night. we both enjoyed it, it is funny and very cynical in places, but as fans of Coen brothers ilms going way back we would both recommend to different age groups. Baffled that some of these other people disliked it so much .....
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- Madison said...
- Posted on Oct 24 2008 13:58 Really disappointing. I was expecting this to be great but the overacting was frightful, it wasnt believable and it just wasn't funny. Avoid
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- SJB said...
- Posted on Oct 24 2008 07:41 The film was awful - the cinema was packed but there were comments "wasn't this supposed to be a comedy" "but its had such good reviews" - well I think they must have been watching another film!
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- MILES said...
- Posted on Oct 23 2008 18:58 anyone who thinks this is meaningful has gotta be kidding -my girl likes bradd but even she hated this boring crap -stay clear or burn in hell
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- James said...
- Posted on Oct 23 2008 16:37 Waste of money, boring, unrealistic and all round disappointment. Avoid at all costs.
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- Rob said...
- Posted on Oct 23 2008 14:52 Possibly the worst movie I have ever seen at the cinema.
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Cast & crew
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cast: Tilda Swinton, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich full cast
Rated: 15
Duration: 96 mins
UK Release: Oct 17 2008
US Release: Sep 12 2008
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