This is a Cohen movie you can safely skip....

Rating: 4/10 (31 January 2009)

Amid all the critical acclaim and unabashed praise that many gave this movie I had hopes. I love "No Country for Old Men" and "Miller's Crossing" to me are master works. "Fargo" retains its charm even when covered with blood or thrust into a wood chipper...but sadly "Burn" fails.
Why? The cast is superb, but they seem to be enjoying playing mockeries of their own screen persona than actually playing a character. There are exceptions to this such as J.K. Simmons, Swanson and Malkovich, but Pitt and Clooney seem more content on doing a parody of themselves than actually turning in a character performance. It sadly reeked of gimmick to me.
I wanted to emphasize with someone, but none of them had any redeeming values which is opposite most of the Cohen brothers' previous works. There is only one character that has any redeeming virtue about him and that was Richard Jenkins as the love lorn gym manager. Of course his demise is brutal, I suppose this is part of the Cohen joke. Now don't get me wrong, I am used to watching characters that you can emphasize with get killed in Cohen movies and still walk away saying it was a good story.
This was not. It was a very narcissistic movie. Which I suppose is the point that the Cohens were trying to make, narcissism pays off after all the self obsessed person is the one that wins in the end of this mess.
The humor is not well played and somehow the comedic timing was off in several scenes. Part was due to the fact that some of the actors seemed not even to take the movie itself seriously enough to make it funny, but like the Ocean 11 movies, seemed to be more interested in celebrity bonding. I just couldn't buy into it. A story about 2 dimensional characters that are vain and self seeking doesn't make a story. It doesn't even make a farce when the characters cannot draw you in.
It was bleh.
Sorry, can't recommend it, but I have hopes for future Cohen movies.