Vanity !

Rating: 3/10 (27 July 2011)

A story about a bunch of idiots. It comes from the Coen brothers, headed by all star cast, and promoted as a crime comedy. That seems OK, if not super, but the outcome is disappointing.
It has cleverly made idiot characters and good pace. I loved that case of a twisty world, marrying noir, spy movies with dark sense of humor. So it's unusual mix, spoofing the idiocy of all, mostly the American middle class.
We have all cheater, haughty, rude, paranoid, ignorant, bad tasting, crazy about money, sex, or looks characters. Enough reasons to be idiots in the movie's conscience. The twisty nature of the story runs well till the third act, where sure the movie loses much of its power. Most of the viewers got turned off after the abrupt murder of (Brad Pitt). I didn't. Because it's a surprise, and it fits a black comedy. Actually, the problem is elsewhere.
Many important questions had been left without answers; what was in Malkovich's memoir?, what's the benefit of Malkovich not seeing McDormand?, what's Malkovich's telephone in the basement said to sadden him?, why Tilda Swinton copied her husband's memoir on a disk?, why the CIA is taking care of covering all the misses? Malkovich kills?? Ahh, because he's angry of many issues! The matter of discovering that Clooney's watcher isn't an enemy is copied from another Coen movie (The Big Lebowski - 1998). And then there is no action, only talks. The whole fates, rather the whole movie, conclude weirdly in just one scene between 2 men talking in a room in certainly one of the most cold, anti-climactic and stupid endings ever made in the history of cinema!
Look at a wicked hint like how all the story is about a woman who succeeds in collecting money for 4 plastic surgeries yet on many corpses along the way. Apparently, the Coens hate stupidity caused by mania over pure materialistic goals, seeing in the lousy criminal a perfect laughingstock to showcase that in many of their movies. But (Burn..) is not a perfect movie in the first place. It's headless, literally!
This time, the Coens want to show that today's world is absurd and full of idiots. However, the irony fades out due to a drama that went absurd itself at its end. And the waterfall of cursing and swearing didn't serve any drama or comedy; it served only being too nasty to stand! And in the end, they as if thought of us as idiots ourselves, punishing us for waiting things like satisfying ending or good movie for that matter. I still ask: How the Coens led their beautifully complicated lines into that sterile joke?!
What if Richard Jenkins's character had some secret around his strange past; being a retired spy, or major CIA man, which uncovers at the end? What if Malkovich turned out to be none other than the head of cooks in the CIA? Or what if the CIA execs are bigger fools; so the world is full of idiots and run by idiots? Originally, the movie, with no redeeming qualities, aborts anything like that, slighting its material and us, selecting to be - at the end - a tragedy of idiots, as if idiocy is the greatest slasher, killing all the stupid characters not even in smart ways. The Coens did it in (Fargo - 1996), and have been doing it many times lately, with (The Ladykillers - 2004), (No Country for Old Men - 2007) and (Burn After Reading - 2008). Aside from being repetitive, it's easy thing to do. And if they write and direct movies about characters that deserve to be killed, then they went so far and so bland!
There are some actors, with possibly interesting characters for laughing purposes, but both of the players and their roles were wasted. Malkovich is shouting, Swinton plays the awful image of her, Clooney doesn't add much to his history. The only winners, if I can call so, are McDormand and Pitt. The latter in specific made the car scene really funny, the sole funny thing in those 90 minutes! Naturally, these stars' names on the poster give such a frustration compared to eventually underdeveloped movie. The title does the same in terms of being an espionage spoof. The music is catchy for no catchy events. And no doubt that the best about it is Vladimir Putin's polished yet dark cinematography, which expressed polished yet dark world.
This is not a comedy, even black one. It promises and doesn't deliver. Builds and doesn't complete. Well, it's 2/3 movie then. And, most probably, that's because the Coens wrote it while writing (No Country for Old Men). I was quite shocked when I read that "They would usually alternate every other day for each script". Because simply when any artist, or any person, does 2 works in one time the assured outcome is whether 2 bad works, or - at the least - one bad work!
There is no system. This is what this movie believes in, and embodies for 2 acts, and then suffers from it at the third. It's rushed, mutilated and tepid. The worst thing though was that the Coens produced it too, releasing it as it was, thinking that it wouldn't disappoint by the way how it wrapped things up. This is vanity; which is a short way to stupidity if you ask me!