Stupidity goes before intelligence?

Rating: 5/10 (21 April 2009)

Joel and Ethan Coen's thirteenth film is a return to their quirky lullabies after 2007's Best Picture winning grand work 'No Country for Old Men'. 'Burn After Reading' stars Frances McDormand as Linda and Brad Pitt as Chad, both fairly dumb gym-trainees who're in possession of a disk containing some valuable and hopefully juicy memoirs from a recently fired CIA-agent Osbourne Cox, played by John Malkovich. They want to blackmail him so they can get money for her plastic surgery operations. Meanwhile Malkovich's wife Katie, (played by Tilda Swinton) is secretly dating internet-cruiser Harry (George Clooney) who's also cheating on his spouse, and is cheating on Katie again with exactly Linda.
It's adultery, it's espionage-light, it's body before brains, and it's a cynical view of America. How seriously cynical it is is another question, but for me not a very important one. The story is mainly pieced together by good performances in classic Coen-roles, especially Malkovich who's mainly pi**ed-off and actually the most professional in the whole film; Brad Pitt doesn't add much substance but he adds belly laughs with iPod, bicycle and a bleeding nose; McDormand has great body language as she does everything in her power to fix her nose, belly, breasts and bum; Swinton is cool, cold and clutching between her two parallel lives, and Clooney makes mostly weird grimaces as a ladies' man, and adds paranoia to the whole "soon-they'll-know-where-you-are-at-any-give-time" CIA stupidity. 'Burn After Reading' is Coen-lite, but Coen lite is way better than most American stuff out there. J.K. Simmons as CIA-superior gives some fine dialog throughout his brief appearance as; "Report back to me when it makes sense", and "I'm fu**ed if I know what we did" - pretty insightful actually.