Very weak for the Coens

Rating: 8/10 (14 September 2008)

I was kind of hoping for another brilliant one-two punch after No Country for Old Men, like Fargo and The Big Lebowski, but Burn After Reading has the feel of being written and made quickly and without much refining. Structurally, it's most like Lebowski, in that it's about a bunch of people mixed up in stuff that is beyond them, mostly nobodies finding themselves in a convoluted spy plot. The joke is that no one really knows that it's all much ado about nothing. The story has Frances MacDormand and Brad Pitt finding a CD with what they think is sensitive information on it. They think they can blackmail John Malkovich, to whom they believe the CD belongs. Meanwhile, George Clooney is screwing around with both Malkovich's wife, Tilda Swinton, and MacDormand, while being married to another woman entirely. Unlike Lebowski, Burn After Reading never bothered to involve me, or be very funny, for that matter. Brad Pitt is the only one who really gets laughs. His meeting with Malkovich, most of which you'll have seen in the commercials, was pretty great. Besides the goofy plot, there's nothing here even resembling the Coen Brothers; no stylish cinematography, little repeatable dialogue. Even Carter Burwell's score feels like it was written in an afternoon, and it sounds a lot like an earlier Coens score, I think Barton Fink. It's most likely their least memorable movie, with the possible exception of The Ladykillers.