Great cast holding up a good movie.

Rating: 7/10 (12 September 2008)

If you like the Coen brother's previous movies, then you're probably going to like this one. It's labeled as a comedy, and humor wise can be compared to Fargo. At times it's cheeky and over the top, but it can also be very serious. The laughs were not frequent from me, but for some reason, the same heart pounding I got from No Country for Old Men, I got at times in this. Really, this was not one of the Coen's best works, though it was still good and entertaining.
Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) has just been fired from the CIA, and he doesn't want to tell his wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) the truth. She's got some secrets of her own, and she's been cheating on Osborne for psychotic charmer Harry (George Clooney), and Katie is secretly in the process of getting a divorce from her husband. Meanwhile, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) is in the process of getting plastic surgery, and she's trying to find a love online, and she meets Harry. Chad (Brad Pitt) works at Hardbodies Gym with Linda, and he finds Osborne's files which were mistakenly left in the women's room. Linda and Chad try to give the files back to Osborne, and expect a small reward in return, he takes it offensively. Chaos ensues as many interconnected stories are told.
The actors were really great here. George Clooney and Frances McDormand are over the top, but funny. Tilda Swinton is perfectly cast as the rude woman she plays. John Malkovich is good at being angry, so he too was perfectly cast. Brad Pitt is a great addition to the cast a the flamboyant and clueless gym worker, and probably was my favorite character, as he was most likable. The other characters were inconsistent as to whether they were likable or not, though whether or not they were, the actors always portrayed them brilliantly.
The stories are okay. At times the movie drags, but usually it's well paced. The script is random and typical Coen strange. It's too serious to be a comedy, and too goofy comedic to be serious, so what we have is a movie stuck in genre limbo, never really reaching any genre successfully. It wants to be a comedy more than anything, but never fully reaches it's goal.
Overall, this is a good, not great, outing for the Coens, with a lighter tone than some of their pictures, but pales as a follow up to No Country for Old Men.
My rating: *** out of ****. 95 mins. R for language, violence and sexual content.