by Monty Cliff

Created on: October 26, 2008

The Coen brothers follow up thier Oscar Winning "No Country for Old Men" with "Burn After Reading", a spy spoof screwball comedy that will have you laughing and scratching your head in confusion.

The plot gets started when gym employees Chad and Linda (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand) find a CD of recently fired CIA-analylst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich). Seeing an oppurtunity for some qucik cash to pay for Linda's much wanted plastic surgeries, the two employees decide to try and collect a "Good Samaritan" fee from Cox, but to no avail. Not one to be put off by setbacks, Linda decides to take the disc of "Raw Intelligence" to the Russians, and from there the plot just goes haywire. Coen brothers regular George Clooney drops in and plays Treasuary agent Harry Pfarrer, who is having affair with Osbourne's wife Katie (Tilda Swinton).

The Coens have a knack for weird, awkward and dry humor, and no where is this more apparent in "Burn After Reading". Most of the jokes don't come via obvious punchlines, instead relying on either the stupidity of thier characters or the absuridity of the situation. And man are these characters stupid. Chad lives for nothing other than working out and listening to his iPod, while Harry just seems to live his life on a repeating cycle of telling people how he doesn't have to use his really big gun, dinner dates, sex and running. Perhaps the only character he uses any kind of punch line is J.K. Simmons, who in two scenes steals the entire movie, honestly, it's him you'll be quoting first after seeing the movie.

I have to give alot of credit to the Coens for creating a cast of characters that are almost impossible to relate to. The characters that aren't too stupid are probably the shallowest people you will see in a movie that's not meant to make another character look better. Tilda Swinton does an amazing job of portraying a woman who has absolutly no emotion but still creates a character worth watching. Frances McDormand is stellar as usual, Clooney knows that the Coens get him to play abslolute imbiciles and is comfortable with the role. The real highlight here though is Brad Pitt, who has Chad is by far the stupidest character the Coens have ever created.

For this film to work, you have to buy in to the absolutly terrible people on screen. If you can't buy into thier personalities, than this movie will fall flat on its face. But if you do, just hang on and enjoy the ride. If you're a regular Coen fan, you'll notice that this isn't one of thier best movies, and it's true. But, a bad Coen brothers movie is still better than most peoples good movies, so it's still worth seeing. 3/5 stars

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