Burn After Reading

Rating: 6/10 (2 April 2011)

From BAFTA nominated writing and director brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (Raising Arizona, Fargo, True Grit), I saw a few clips of this film on TV, and thought it looked worth a go. Basically CIA veteran and Balkan expert Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is fired from his job, which he is very confused and angry about, and with nothing else to do he decides to start his memoir. His wife Katie (BAFTA nominated Tilda Swinton) meanwhile has been having an affair with lover, philandering State Department marshal Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), therefore she wants a divorce. She unintentionally drops a disk from her gym bag at the Georgetown fitness centre, and on it is Osborne's memoir, and two employees at the centre, amiable goof Chad Feldheimer (BAFTA nominated Brad Pitt) and Linda Litzke (Golden Globe nominated Frances McDormand) who wants money for some surgical operations. Chad has read through some of the stuff on the disk and when he get his contact details Chad thinks they blackmail Osborne to give them a big fee or face them handing the disk to the Russian embassy. To insure they can try and get something from him, they try to find out as much more about Osborne as possible, and their hair-brained half-baked scheme may be slowly working, with the help of Linda's boss Ted (Richard Jenkins). They do manage to get into Osborne's house after some sort of deal, I can't remember why, but it seems most of the characters are led to this location. Chad sneaks into his house for some reason, and when Harry comes back to change and spruce up he hides in the closet, and when harry opens it up the first thing he does is shoot him in the head, only to find he is a "spook", a man with no identification. In the end, the CIA led by the Superior (Spider-Man's J.K. Simmons) try to sort out everything that happened, with Chad and Ted being dead, Osborne suffering an fatal illness, Harry being arrested, and Linda agreeing to co-operate to get her plastic surgery, in the end they learn from their lesson, although we don't know what they did wrong? Also starring Elizabeth Marvel as Sandy Pfarrer, David Rasche as CIA Officer and Home Alone 3's Olek Krupa as Krapotkin. All the actors of the film do pretty well in their roles, Malkovich going over the top, Clooney looking cool and panicky together, Pitt being a doofus, McDormand being insecure, and Swinton being stiff lipped, and obviously the direction is as good as your going to get. I may not have understand all the elements to the story, the blackmail thing was obviously the most interesting part, but it was quite funny in most places, and it is supposedly the third part in the Coen brothers' "idiot films", following O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty, a worthwhile black comedy crime drama. It was nominated the BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical. Good!