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Burn After Reading
Take an adulterous couple (Tilda Swinton and George Clooney). Add an angry but oblivious husband who has just been laid off by the CIA (John Malkovich). Throw in a rogue computer disc containing his private records, and let it fall into the hands of a dummy gym trainer (Brad Pitt) and his avaricious colleague (Frances McDormand) who sees it as a potential windfall to pay for her plastic surgery. Stir and stand well back. That’s essentially the recipe for the latest madcap mayhem from the Coen boys – a distinct change of pace after the Oscar-winning gravitas of No Country for Old Men. Unfortunately, from where I’m sitting, it’s also a return to the patchy, snarky form that has plagued their pseudo screwball comedies over the last ten years. Set in Washingon DC, the seat of government, this is a cold, cynical movie about cold, cynical people. Even the lovers are that way: Clooney’s roué Harry isn’t just married to somebody else; he’s a sexaholic cheating on his wife whenever he possibly can. In his spare time he’s building a giant pleasuring device in the cellar. It’s good to have a hobby. Malkovich’s ex-spy, Osbourne Cox, is so consumed with bitterness against the Agency he’s determined to write a tell-all memoir to expose everything. But at least he has personal motivation. Linda and Chad, the physical fitness gurus played by McDormand and Pitt are ready to sell out their country to the Russians for no better reason than Osbourne balks at their inept attempts at extortion. The only sympathetic character is their boss Ted (Richard Jenkins) who is carrying a torch for Linda, but who might as well be invisible for all she cares. (The Coens let slip in one interview that the character was inspired by Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky’s supposed friend.)
So the Coens take a dim view of human nature in DC… Who doesn’t? The trouble with Burn After Reading is not that its compulsive, unhappy, angry, greedy, disloyal, deceitful and hopelessly stupid personnel are unrecognizable or even unrepresentative, it’s that they’re not particularly funny. Encouraged to play up their characters’ one-dimensional personalities, the stars mostly stick to type. Clad in Spandex and sipping on Gatorade, Brad Pitt is fun as the hyper naïve Chad, but only if you don’t mind that he’s ten years too old for the part. Nobody rants and rails like John Malkovich with a hatchet in his hand, but you couldn’t say he was breaking new ground here. At least Clooney shows us how threadbare superficial charm really is. It’s quite a stretch when he and Linda hook up through an internet dating agency, but what would a Coen brothers’ movie be without outrageous coincidences? I just wish this one didn’t feel like they had made it up on the fly.
Carter Burwell’s declamatory score tries to mock up notes of suspense and paranoia, but the brothers only cast a cursory glance in that direction. Suspense requires a degree of empathy, and they’re at their most aloof here. The result is every bit as disposable as the title implies. Burn After Reading is as nihilistic as No Country For Old Men but for me, anyway, the prevailing sourness stifles too many of the laughs. The most enjoyable performances come from David Rasche as a CIA operative trying to fathom what’s behind this mystifying flurry of chicanery and violence, and JK Simmons as his perplexed superior, content to put a lid over the entire mess and move on. It’s an exercise in pointlessness, with laughs as hollow as a politician’s promise. Tom Charity 
More information about Burn After Reading » Critics' Reviews
With their hangdog mugs now nestled against the bosom of mainstream Hollywood, indie-crossover darlings the Coen... read more on www.timeout.com Members' ReviewsReviews Voted Most HelpfulMost Recent Reviews |
David Jenkins, Time Out