Burn After Reading
Written and Directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, George Clooney, J.K. Simmons, Richard Jenkins

I’ve been pretty excited to see spy movies coming back in a big way as of late (thanks mainly to the success of the Bourne movies), and when I heard that The Coen Brothers were going to offer their take on the genre I couldn’t wait to see what they had in store. Espionage in the digital age definitely ain’t what it used to be, but The Coens usually have a great knack for paying tribute to what has come before rather than simply emulating current trends.

That said, Burn After Reading is surprisingly based in the here and now, rather than the Cold War era, and it’s not really a spy movie per se. The twist is that they decided use it as a backdrop for a quirky screwball comedy instead of a full-on political thriller. With a star-studded cast lined up to participate, this movie had all the makings of another Coen Brothers cult classic, and perhaps even their first mainstream comedy hit.

John Malkovich is Osborne Cox, an analyst for the C.I.A. who gets demoted. Furious, he quits his job and decides to write a tell-all memoir instead. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Osborne, his wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is cheating on him with Treasury agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), and is preparing to divorce him. When her lawyer’s assistant accidentally drops a CD with Osborne’s financial records in the locker room at a gym, two gym employees (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand) end up finding it and hatch a plan to blackmail him for its return.

I have to say right up front that Burn After Reading is not the strongest entry from the Coens, especially when compared to last year’s Academy Award-winning No Country for Old Men. Granted, their ability to hop genres is what makes their output so prolific, and not everything they do needs to be Oscar-worthy. The problem is that even when compared with some of their previous comedies like Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, this movie doesn’t quite measure up. That’s not to say that there aren’t some things to like here, but I think they have proven themselves capable of much more.

Burn After Reading is stacked to the rafters with acting talent (some familiar to Coen movies and some working with them for the first time), and there are a lot of enjoyable performances here. In terms of comedy, Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand are kind of the focus of the film. They bumble their way through the attempted blackmail, driving the plot forward and reinforcing the farcical nature of the flick. They also bring the most energy on screen, and although at times their airhead antics are a bit too much, one of the highlights was watching them play off John Malkovich’s angry and bitter straight man. When Brad Pitt’s character exits the story, however, it really hurts the remainder of the film.

George Clooney is no stranger to Coen Brothers movies, and even though he plays a sleazy womanizer, he is his usual charismatic self here (although he wasn’t given much comedy to sink his teeth into). His character’s one quirky trait is that he likes to jog a lot… oh, and he builds weird sex machines. Tilda Swinton is great once again as a “cold-hearted bitch”, and she works well clashing with Clooney much like she did previously in Michael Clayton.

In general I feel like Burn After Reading is something that looks a bit better on the page than it does on the screen. I liked the idea of all the intersecting relationships, and the scene in which Clooney’s paranoia comes to a head was a great pay off. There’s also a subtle commentary on the idiocy of heightened surveillance in America, embodied by a bewildered J.K. Simmons as he tries hopelessly to find some meaning in the whole mess.

Unfortunately, for a comedy it’s not exactly what I would call laugh out funny. I liked the tone, but some of the characters felt like they were too quirky for no good reason, and there are a couple moments of brutal violence that serve as a bit of a buzzkill. I know some might compare this aspect favourably to the dark comedic edge of Fargo, but I just thought it felt out of place.

Overall, the characters are under developed, the story feels unfinished, and the dialogue is unremarkable. The latter was the biggest surprise coming from The Coen Brothers; there just weren’t a lot of memorable exchanges throughout the film, and if that had at least been more solid, the rest of the movie’s flaws could have been easily overlooked.

I’d put Burn After Reading only slightly above middling Coen films like The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty (both of which I have defended in the past). Perhaps it is just another example of high expectations leading to disappointment, but considering the cast this feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity. If you’re a fan of the Coens, I’m confident that you’ll still get something out of this movie, but I suspect others may find it unfulfilling and even a bit tedious. — Sean

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