Destroy After Reading

Rating: 6/10 (11 October 2008)

The Coen Brothers are back with Burn After Reading, after the Oscar winning thriller, No COuntry for Old Man.
To create Burn After Reading, the brothers used the following formula to tell the story: Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), an CIA agent, was dismissed by CIA + unhappiness with his wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton) = Obourne's decision to create a memoir.
Katie's infidelity with her friend, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), behind Osbourne's back + Osbourne creating a memoir = Memoir burnt into a CD.
CD - do not know how the CD ends up in a female lockers in a gym = CD landed into the hands of 2 gym workers, Chad (Brad Pitt) and Linda (Frances McDormand) CD x (Chad + Linda)+ thought of highly classified secrets = extortion from Osbourne.
Extortion - failure to extort from Osbourne = sell the CD to Russian Embassy at a higher price.
Katie removed Osbourne out of his life X acts to make his life miserable = Osbourne in frustration.
(Linda X Harry)/ spying from some mysterious character = Terror and fear.
Osbourne in frustration + Terror and fear + Selling the CD to Russian Embassy at a high price = Disaster.
It takes time and patience to work out several complicated formulas, which gives you Burn After Reading. The Coen Brothers are quick to solve the formulas, but it seems that they might had missed out some details or two, which leaves several questions to the movie.
Are they selling a dark comedy with the story that falls towards Fargo? Sort of. To me, Fargo and Burn deals a type of issue: one needs money (whether they need it desperately or greed makes them wants the money.)and gets the money through the wrong way, which ends up getting more than they bargained for.
While Fargo features only McDormand and William H Macy as the leading cast, the Coen Brothers throws in more A-listed actors and actresses and eye candies to spice up the story. It is a good thing to have them, but too much of it and not handling them properly just spoils everything.
No crossover between Clooney and Pitt, little crossover with Clonney and Malkovich. The lack of direct face to face interaction between the 3 leading actors just ruins the expectation from the audience. And why no face to face interaction between McDormand and Swinton? It is sad to say that with a list of A-listers, there are not much chemistry among each other. It seems that McDormand's interaction with Pitt and Clooney is the only reason that prevents the movie from getting a total failure.
Burn After Reading seems to make one remember as a movie by Coen Brothers with a group of A-listed cast, but easily forgotten, compared to the impact the Coens created when Fargo was released to the public in 1995. So, one can simply destroy after reading it.