Mileage

Rating: 7/10 (13 September 2008)

It's interesting that the Coens chose this film after the barnburner that was Old Country. To catch the trickle down crowd with a piece that makes fun of the very part of the crowd that trickles down - that's real courage.
Burn After Reading condescends, but meta-textually. And Brad Pitt is a big give-away that this is exactly what the Coens are doing. He's amusing enough to keep the non-Coen audience entertained, but hollow enough to obviate the underlying theme. You just got mocked, average America. But the Coen take on average America cuts a wide-swath - it even includes us, the Princeton (equivalent) educated who think that we're artists because we like a good film but what do we ever really do - write a few pages of memoir as cliché (see our user comments) and wander around with a drink in our hands (how many movies have you watched this week?).
Nice. Don't get me wrong - I think that it's great. The Coens have successfully skewered, and they've gotten away with it. That the mise-en-scene that they created depends on our participation shows how masterly they are at their craft.