Film Review

09 January 2009 11:46 BST

Burn After Reading

Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, out October 17th, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, running time 95 mins.

In a nutshell...

The funniest Coen brothers film since The Big Lebowski.

What's it all about?

Osborne Cox (Malkovich), a CIA analyst, finds himself being fired as a result of his drinking problem. Dismayed, he returns home to work on his memoirs, saving important and highly confidential material onto a computer disc along the way. Osborne's uptight wife Katie (Swinton) is not entirely surprised by the news and since she is already engaged in an affair with married federal marshal and insatiable womaniser Harry Pfarrer (Clooney), she makes plans to leave her husband for him.

Meanwhile across town at Hardbodies Gym, employee Linda Litzke (McDormand) is the wrong side of 30 and intent on undergoing extensive cosmetic surgery in the hope that a brand new body will win her the man of her dreams. She spends all of her free time scouring for potential suitors on internet dating sites and relies on her goofy but kind-hearted gym co-worker Chad Feldheimer (Pitt) for advice. When the mysterious CIA disc containing "highly classified s***" accidentally falls into the hands of Chad and Linda, they become determined to exploit the hand that fate has dealt them to their advantage, with hilarious consequences.


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Who's in it?

If there is one thing that cinemagoers can rely on the Coen brothers for, it is to strip Hollywood's leading men of their suave heart-throb status and force them to play bumbling idiots. Burn After Reading certainly does not disappoint, with both George Clooney (who has worked with the Coens twice previously) and Brad Pitt (a first-timer) delivering delightfully stupid performances as a lecherous, deluded heartbreaker of middle-aged desperate women (Harry) and a bequiffed, ridiculously naive goofball (Chad) respectively. John Malkovich is wonderfully unhinged as a cuckolded man on the edge, while Tilda Swinton is at her stony-faced, no-nonsense optimum, delivering classic lines such as "stop the foolishness!" with aplomb. Meanwhile Joel Coen's wife Frances McDormand's performance is unlikely to eclipse her Oscar-winning outing as pregnant cop Marge Gunderson in Fargo, but it is nevertheless charming and memorable.

As an example

"You're a Mormon. Compared to you we all have a drinking problem." - Osborne Cox (after learning he has been fired)

"Osborne Cox... I thought you might be worried about the security of your s***." - Chad

"Go around the corner... we'll do it in the back." - Harry
"You're so coarse." - Katie
"I meant back of the car... not a rear entry situation." - Harry

Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars

Although they have been making films together for more than 20 years, it was the success of last year's No Country for Old Men that established the Coen brothers as part of the Hollywood mainstream. However, last year's murky, relatively dialogue-sparse four-time Oscar-winning movie is probably not the favourite choice of most Coen brothers fans. Burn After Reading marks a return to their quirky, darkly humorous best, therefore it is unlikely to sweep the board again at this year's Academy Awards.

What the others say

"A tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy." – Guardian

"A fun ride down the roller coaster of the dark side of human nature as only the Coens can explore it." – Cinematical

So is it any good?

Burn After Reading takes the best-loved elements of all the Coen brothers' previous big films and amplifies them, usually with hugely comic effect. As in all of their films, location plays a huge part and in Burn After Reading the Coens poke fun at big budget thrillers by presenting a 'movie Washington' – a place where important and crucial things happen and where blackmail and high-speed car chases are all part of a day's work. As in many of their previous films, the Coens chose their cast before they wrote the script, with the result that every single character is a sheer delight and each actor executes their part to perfection. Burn After Reading also has some of the funniest, sharpest dialogue of any Coen brothers film – a detail sorely lacking in No Country. Much of the wittiest, most satirical dialogue takes place between the hapless, incompetent CIA officials, whose organisation is the butt of most of the film's jokes.

However the Coen brothers have traditionally been relied upon to be unpredictable – a trait which has both delighted film fans and frustrated critics. They are the maverick filmmakers who do not sit comfortably in any niche, as capable of making a shadowy thriller such as No Country as an off-the-wall cult comedy like the Big Lebowski. Burn After Reading is probably the Coen brothers' safest film to date. You get the impression that the filmmakers are being slightly complacent by not challenging themselves whatsoever in the follow-up to the phenomenal success of No Country. Burn After Reading has the starriest cast, the most conventional plot and the most stereotypical characterisation.

That said, it's still one hell of an enjoyable ride and a Coen brothers political satire/sex farce/screwball charade is still likely to stand head and shoulders above any other comedies that Hollywood has to offer this year.

8/10

Natasha Hegde

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