Film review: 'Burn After Reading' takes Coens' humor to dark side
"Burn After Reading" is (a) inhabited almost entirely by idiots, neurotics and psychopaths; and (b) set in the nation's capital.
Pistol-packin' John Malkovich is a highlight of Joel and Ethan Coen's dark spy-comedy, "Burn After Reading."Macall PolayFocus Features
Rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content and violence
Length: 97 minutes
Released: September 12, 2008 NationwideScore: 3.5
Cast: George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel CoenProducer: Tim Bevan, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Eric Fellner
Writer: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Distributor: Focus Features
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It's tempting to think that the sum of (a) + (b) = the Coen Brothers' most political movie yet, but additional values alter the equation. "Burn" may be inspired by eight years of Washington iniquity, but it hardly represents a departure from the typically curdled worldview of the Coens. The movie is played for broad comedy, but it's as dark as the brothers' previous film, the Oscar-anointed Best Picture of 2007, "No Country for Old Men," and as ruthless as the Coens' debut, 1984's "Blood Simple." It's "Fargo" minus the snow, but with even more caricature -- and a repeat of the earlier film's sudden ax attack. The message remains the same: Call it the audacity of hopelessness.
Stealing every scene even though he is surrounded by veteran character actors and A-list movie stars is John Malkovich, cast as an angry, intense and appropriately spook-pale ex-CIA agent whose notes for a memoir, stored on a computer disk, become the Hitchcock-style "MacGuffin" that drives the twisty plot. (In "No Country," the only slightly more relevant MacGuffin was a satchel of drug money.)
When the agent's lost disk is found by a dimwitted fitness addict who seems to think life is a C+C Music Factory video (an extremely funny, perpetual-motion Brad Pitt), he takes it to his supervisor at the "Hardbodies" gym, a woman (Frances McDormand) desperate for liposuction, rhinoplasty, "bust augmentation" and other procedures not covered by her medical insurance. (Assessing her appearance, McDormand's character observes glumly: "I would be laughed out of Hollywood.")
The friends' conspire to profit from the mysterious, apparently classified material contained on the disk, but their quest for a "reward" (or is it blackmail?) leads to a series of absurdist misunderstandings and violent mishaps that also involve the agent's wife (Tilda Swinton), the wife's lover (George Clooney), the Hardbodies manager (Richard Jenkins), a CIA chief (J.K. Simmons, one of moviedom's current MVPs) and a children's book author (Elizabeth Marvel), whose politically educational tomes include "Point of Order, Oliver!"
Written, directed and produced by Joel and Ethan Coen (the brothers no longer coyly distribute the major filmmaking credits between them, although they still edit their films under the nom du splice, Roderick Jaynes), "Burn After Reading" is surprisingly flat. The opening scenes with Malkovich are strong, but McDormand's nutty gym worker -- crucial to the plot -- is unconvincing; even in this cartoonish context, we don't really believe that she and her goofy cohort would behave the way they do. The tragic outcomes of "Fargo" and "No Country for Old Men" seem the inevitable consequences of the foolish and desperate actions that precede them, but "Burn After Reading" seems to have been contrived in reverse to ensure that most of the characters had no alternative but to hit a dead end.
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