Burn After Reading (2008)
Directed by The Coen Brothers
Written by The Coen Brothers
Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins
Release Date September 12th, 2008
Published September 11th, 2008
As a way of cleaning the fictional blood off their hands, Joel and Ethan Coen followed their Oscar nominated, blood-soaked masterpiece Fargo with the brilliant, offbeat comedy The Big Lebowski, a movie so wonderfully fun and gentle it could heal even the darkest mind. This same pattern plays out for the Coen's again with the back to back, triumph of opposites, No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading. After going dark and broody, for an Oscar win, the Coen's did another 180 and deliver arguably their silliest, giddiest effort to date.
In Washington D.C a CIA analyst, Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), has just been fired. In a fit of pique he tells his wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) he wasn't fired he quit. Osbourne plans on writing his memoirs, though his wife wonders, to his face, who would want to read that? Naturally, the wife is cheating on him. She is cheating with someone sunnier and far less complicated, a doofus federal marshal named Harry (George Clooney) who likes to jog after sex.
On a different planet yet somehow the same movie are Linda (Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt). Best friends and employees of the same cookie cutter franchise gym, Linda is desperate for plastic surgery that is beyond both her means and necessity and Chad is basically along for the ride, his good nature being all that bonds him to the story.
Banging these two universes together is the discovery of a computer disc at the gym that contains Osbourne's memoirs filled with CIA secrets that Linda and Chad believe will be worth money to Cox and if not Cox maybe the Russians. Watching everything in permanent apoplexy are the CIA brass played by David Rasche and J.K Simmons who manages to bring his dad from Juno and his Spider-Man newspaper boss together for another brilliant supporting turn.
The bonds of these characters deepen in ways that are entirely contrived but who cares when we are all having such a good time. Joel and Ethan Coen establish a tone of such wonderful goofball whimsy in Burn After Reading that one forgets to fact check the movie as it goes along to make sure everything makes sense.
I have a theory about the Coen Brothers and George Clooney. After three movies together in which Clooney has become more and more of a doofus, it's clear the Coen's enjoy taking one of the world's handsomest actors and making him a fool. Like the kids picked on in High School taking their psychic revenge on the most popular kid in school, the Coen's appear to revel in making Clooney the fool and he appears to be having a ball doing it.
The Coens make similar magic with Brad Pitt, taking another of People Magazine's Sexiest Men Alive and turning him into a himbo doofus to wonderful comic effect. Brad Pitt is hilarious as an airhead who has no awareness of his own ludicrous attractiveness. There is a subtext to the way the Coen's use both Clooney and Pitt, cleverly twisting the cool, charismatic personas of both actors into something wild, strange and hilarious all at once.
Burn After Reading is a good natured, if occasionally dark and violent, little comedy. The Coen's can't seem to escape a slight body count and yet they still manage to keep things on a ludicrously, deliriously bright and funny tone. Burn After Reading has some faulty bits of logic and a couple of plot holes and contrivances that would come to light under more scrutiny but who cares. The point of Burn After Reading is just being hilarious.
The Coen Brothers do such a terrific job of distracting us with goofiness and good nature that we forget the plot, the motivations, even the surprising amount of violence. The film is R-rated for violence and for something that Clooney's character builds that will either make you gasp or laugh uncontrollably. Either way, that scene alone with a smiling Clooney and a curious McDormand is worth the price of admission.
