Burn After Reading

Burn after Reading (2008) starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and Brad Pitt.

Before...I was expecting a laugh out loud hysterical romp of Coen brothers proportions. I love the Coen brothers and the fact that they can toy between dark and sinister (No Country for Old Men) and intelligent slap stick comedy (The Ladykillers) shows how brilliant they are. The cast is brilliant and from seeing the trailers I was expecting a lot from Brad Pitt. So lets plunge into the movie review, shall we!

Osbourne Cox (Malkovich), a Balkan expert, is fired at the CIA, so he begins a memoir. His wife (Swinton) wants a divorce and expects her lover, Harry (Clooney), a philandering State Department marshal, to leave his wife. A diskette of Osbourne's musings falls out of a gym bag at a Georgetown fitness center. Two employees there try to turn it into cash: Linda (McDormand), who wants money for elective surgery, and Chad (Pitt), an amiable goof. They try to sell the disc back to Osbourne, who has a short fuse, then they visit the Russian embassy. To sweeten the pot, they decide they need more of Osbourne's secrets. Meanwhile, Linda's boss likes her, and Harry's wife leaves for a book tour. All roads lead to Osbourne's house.

Although it wasn't as hysterically funny as I thought the trailer had it as being, this is definitely not a bad thing. The plot is far more complex and intelligent than I could have hoped for, which is silly as other Coen brothers films are as slick and as stylish as this one is. The script and plot of this film is fantastic and in my view faultless. As people have noted though, this isn't your classic Coen brothers film, there is no character that stands above the rest in the moral stakes. All of the characters have their faults, and that for me is what makes this film so endearing. All of them are realistic, you can actually imagine meeting these characters, though I am not sure you would want to as they are complete and utter fools and jerks.

It seems that these actors were made for these characters, and in me doing my research for this review I found that this was the case. The Coen brothers wrote each of these characters with each of these actors in mind. And it is a testament to their writing that you don't actually see the actors playing the characters, but instead you see a fantastic story unfurl in front of you. Pitt and Clooney are the two stand out roles in this film for me, it is their excellent comic timing that makes this film for me. The other actor that stands out for me is JK Simmons, in more of a cameo appearence. He is hilarious!

Initially again, I was thinking of giving this film 4 stars but as I have done in the past, I now am looking back over this review to find sufficient faults to take away that one star. The only one I can see is that it is not classic Coen brothers, but for me that isn't really a fault, it is a blessing. Now in that I am not saying that the rest of their films are awful it just goes to show that they can step out of their usual routine comedy films and still produce this gem of a movie. And so for that I'm giving it...