At last the Coens' biting satire is back

Rating: 8/10 (4 January 2009)

Following their hugely successful and equally brilliant No Country for Old Men the Coens have returned to their all too familiar territory: the black comedy. The good news is that their approach was different than in case of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, which were in my view lesser works for their mass appeal oriented humor. With Burn After Reading the biting satire is back: plastic surgery, internet dating, body building/shaping, the marriage-adultery-divorce triangle and even the CIA are all targets that get their fair share of the Coens' poisoned arrows. As always, a terrific cast supports this endeavor. First and foremost Brad Pitt has to receive special credit, not only for being the funniest of the lot but for willingly making a complete fool of himself for the role and doing it brilliantly. Actually this shouldn't come as a great surprise since he was equally hilarious as Mickey in Snatch and also as Jeffrey in Twelve Monkeys but this time he's funny in a completely different way. And this is a quality great actors share: always showing something new, something we haven't seen before. As for the rest of the cast it seems that the males got the funnier parts, Malkovich is great, Clooney is good (somewhat reminiscent of the character he played in O, Brother), while Frances McDormand could've been funnier (her name is spot on though). Other highlights include all the scenes that take place at the CIA (the concluding dialog between JK Simmons and David Rasche is a killer) and the first phone conversation between Pitt and Malkovich is deadly, too. So, what we get is a true Coen-style black comedy that provides numerous laughs and altogether great entertainment. And if you want to search for something meaningful beneath all this fun, you'll find that the movie is about how egoistic, lonely and lost we are when we elbow each other out of the way to accomplish our petty goals. It may not be as strong as The Big Lebowski but nonetheless proves that when it comes to sarcastic humor the Coens still stand way above the rest.