Between paranoia and intelligence, you get it or you don't

Rating: 7/10 (28 January 2009)

This is the kind of movie you either love or hate, understand what it's all about or have no frickin' idea what made you watch it or take you to a higher level of humor or slap you with a feeling of idiocy. This is, after all, a Coen Brothers film. From The Big Lebowski to Fargo and No Country for Old Men to The Hudsucker Proxy, you either get it or you don't.
This is a very intellectually challenged movie that has made fools of everyone in a subtle comedy that parodies the paranoia of those who believe in conspiracies and give high regards to governments who may not actually be as perspicacious as we like them to be.
With a long list of reputable cast from Brad Pitt to George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and J.K. Simmons they each steal the show with their quirky characters and bizarre eccentricities. This is enough to enjoy for an implied humor that says so much about ourselves when we go overboard with our imaginative theories and this is how we may seem like if we were watched.
It starts off with a simple discovery of a disk that holds secrets that could ruin the US government if it falls onto the wrong hands. Everyone associated with it seems to endanger themselves one way or the other that gets intertwined with a domestic complication rather than a political predicament. Ridiculous as it may be this is the kind of news you would read from funny crime stories or bungling criminals and as they say 'truth is stranger than fiction' and this is what you'll get for your money's worth.