The Burn Supremacy

Rating: 8/10 (26 October 2008)

Burn After Reading is in many ways a typical Coens movie. It's filled with dark humour and quirky characters. But after No Country for Old Men, a fantastic movie, they decided to reinvent not only one but a few movie genres, including their own of course.
The A-list cast serves a well-defined purpose, which to an extent is to parody themselves. With the exception of Tilda Swinton, all of the characters were written with the specific actors in mind, and it works very well. In particular Brad Pitt seems to be having a lot of fun and Clooney plays one of his strangest and funniest characters ever. Coens "Regular" McDormand plays a cosmetic surgery / internet love obsessed gym staffer and Malkovich, well, he has had some experience with self-parody and it shows.
In fact the whole movie is a role-reversal of sorts, specially spy/thriller movies - Burn After Reading has all the right elements but twisted in the Coens own particular way. One of the reasons this movie works is because there is a constant feeling of "what's gonna happen next?", which keeps it interesting; and the constant surprising twists and turns the story takes. Even the McGuffin element here works this way.
This is a sometimes dark, but always humorous film - the CIA scenes in particular cracked me up. If you're a Coens fan, this is an obligatory treat.
However, if your first and only exposure to the brothers work was No Country For Old Men, be prepared for something very different in both scope and approach; perhaps a viewing of their previous movies would be in order for this to be fully appreciated.
8/10