Good Coen Brothers romp

Rating: Null/10 (23 June 2009)

In Washington, D.C., a group of seemingly unrelated characters and a tangle of subplots makes for an entertaining, if lightweight, star-studded comedy with tragic overtones. A CIA man (John Malkovich) gets fired while his wife (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with a playboy (George Clooney); an insecure woman (Frances McDormand) and her dippy co-worker (Brad Pitt) find the CIA man's memoir and try to peddle it to the Russians.
This film has all the delightful earmarks of a typical Coen Brothers film: It's full of ordinary, somewhat dim characters, greed has a major role, the dialogue is often hysterically funny, and things get quickly out of hand and disaster ensues. The casting is typically odd; Clooney is made out to be a pretentious and rather unsavory guy despite his charisma and Pitt is a foolish simpleton. McDormand is wonderful as the naive middle-ager who gets mixed up in international affairs, and Malkovich is manic and off-kilter as usual.
It's all chaotic and weird, silliness gone wild that is fun to watch but soon forgotten.