Definitely a lesser work by the Coen Brothers

Rating: 4/10 (1 February 2011)

When you watch a movie and don't understand what it's about, you might just be stupid. When it's clear the folks who made the movie don't understand what it's about, that's when the viewer is better off being stupid. While Burn After Reading looks and sounds like a typical Coen Brothers production, there's an awkwardly flat feeling to it because the Coens seem to change their mind from scene to scene, and almost from moment to moment, as to whether this film is being serious or funny, sarcastic or earnest, realistic or over the top.
Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) is a CIA analyst who's lost his job. He's the sort of pretentious intellectual who pronounces the word "memoir" as "mem-wah" and sees himself as the superior mind at war with a world full of morons. Osbourne is married to Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton), a jagged iceberg of a woman who quickly becomes disgusted enough with her unemployed husband to consider divorce. It also helps that Katie is having an affair with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a boor of a U.S. Marshal with the slippery charm of a good used car salesmen.
Osbourne tries to write a book about his life in the CIA, only to discover that he doesn't have anything to say. A copy of what he does manage to put to page falls into the hands of Linda Lizke and Chad Feldheimer (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt), co-workers at a fitness gym. Linda seizes on what she thinks is classified information in Osbourne's book as a way to pay for the plastic surgery she desperately wants, either by blackmailing Osbourne or selling it to the Russians because all of Linda's knowledge about spying and espionage appears to have come from the James Bond films she watched as a much younger woman. As for Chadwell, he's a high spirited meathead who can't handle anything much more complicated than a treadmill.
The circle completes itself when Harry starts having an affair with Linda while simultaneously moving in with Katie. As Linda and Chad try and extort money out of Osbourne, someone starts following Harry and everyone winds up tangled together in one of those instances where everyone's mutual idiocy winds up looking like some sort of intricate scheme.
From the very beginning, Burn After Reading is never able or even willing to establish a consistent tone. Nowhere is that more evident than in the vastly differing performances of the cast. John Malkovich plays it like he's in a black comedy about a self-important man discovering he's an insignificant cog in the world machine. Tilda Swinton acts as though she's in a comedy of manners. Frances McDormand is doing a satire on the issues of aging and body image to a middle-aged actress. George Clooney is doing a straight midlife crisis movie. Brad Pitt's mugging for the camera falls somewhere between parody and spoof. Like most Coen brother movies, the humor here is supposed to flow out of the characters' interactions. Because these people are all telling different stories, nothing ever gels and no one has any chemistry with anyone else.
Unlike most Coen brother films, this story is so poorly constructed, though, that you're never waiting to see what happens next. You're only waiting for the movie to end. A sign of a poorly plotted script is one where major characters simply vanish for long stretches of time because there's no room for them. In this case, it's Osbourne who disappears for the middle of the film and Katie who fades away at the end. They're the first characters we're introduced to, but Harry and Linda come to dominate so much of the narrative that the movie ends up ignoring the very people it initially establishes in the viewer's mind.
Another sign of a poorly written script is when the authors introduce a character to explain or underline things for the audience. That's exactly what the Coen brothers do here. Writers who do that fool themselves into thinking the viewer is too dumb to get the point. If you have to be that blatant about the point, you're not making it very well.
Some bad casting is also at work here. George Clooney is playing a middle aged guy who has affairs with other middle aged women, but middle aged guys who look like Clooney don't bird dog women their own age. Brad Pitt is also way to old to be playing a brainless hunk of beef, especially when he's paired with a female character that's consumed with worry about her own age and physical appearance. Pitt is in great shape here, but there's a point when you can no longer play young and he flew by that a while ago. Linda and Chad are clearly meant to be an older woman and a younger guy, but Pitt is much too close to McDormand's age for that to work and the movie never acknowledges that. There might have been something to be made out of a woman of McDormand's years who wants to look better and a man of Pitt's age who does look better, but that's never even hinted at.
It is the Coen brothers, so there's still some stuff worth watching here. None of it comes completely together and Burn After Reading never engages your mind or your heart.