Burn After Reading

Release Date: 9.12.08


Most viewers have taken notice of Joel and Ethan Coen after their dark drama set in 1980 Texas, No Country For Old Men. The twisted underlying theme of their genre include needy underdogs taking matters into their own hands as vigilantes of sorts, even if they are unconventional. Burn After Reading recaptures the magic first brought to audiences with Raising Arizona, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski. Many have deemed this new project as “a spy farce”, lumping this work in with the likes of Austin Powers, which I find insulting. Sure, it is a caper with no stakes, nothing to fight over and overwrought by “a league of idiots”, but Burn After Reading is a must-see for those who are morose enough to laugh at murder, mayhem, and injustice being served to innocent people.

However, moviegoers be warned: do not learn anything of the plot or how it ensues prior to seeing the film. It weaves a more intricate web than expected or even noticed until talking it through with others once you leave the theater. The all-star cast carried this film to the very end of its threads.

The basic idea is that Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand, complete with choppy Marge Gunderson speech) and Chad Feldhemier (Brad Pitt, with a blonde skunk of a hairdo) are two Hard Body gym employees who stumble across a disc they think contains top secret information. Osborne Cox (John Malkovich sporting a bowtie) is owner of said disc and is frustrated that he is constantly blackmailed for a reward and simply cannot write his memoir as revenge to the CIA for his termination. His Ice Queen of a wife (Tilda Swinton with perfect execution) is utterly tired of him and proceeds to have her needs met with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a paranoid womanizing federal marshal who relies on his five mile run (ideally post-sex) to relax.

As described before, Burn After Reading is a thriller-comedy with no stakes to squabble over and a bunch of idiots who do the squabbling. It's one of those movies where you feel it is unethical to laugh at the horror, but you do, and will continue through the entirety of the movie. Albeit, the first 15 minutes are rough to get through when compared with the rest of the film, and unfortunately that may be the only flaw in this otherwise brilliant Coen comedy. Many have claimed it as the funniest since The Big Lebowski, and I must agree.


Rating: A-