Central Idiots Agency

Rating: 9/10 (20 September 2008)

The Coen brothers' filmography appears to follow a cyclical pattern: in 1998, after winning the Best Screenplay Oscar for Fargo, they released that piece of cult insanity known as The Big Lebowski. Ten years later, courtesy of their recent Oscar success with the stunning No Country for Old Men, comes Burn After Reading, another piece of zany, irresistible madness. On one level, it is also a perfect companion piece to their previous film, showing once again that America really is, forgive the expression, no country for old men. Especially the ones in suits and specs who trade secrets.
One such man is Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a bad-tempered CIA analyst who is fired for having a drinking problem. Since he all of a sudden has a lot of free time, he thinks an appropriate way to spend it would be writing a memoir, much to the chagrin of his uptight wife Katie (Tilda Swinton). Unfortunately, the disk containing a small part of his remembrances is found on the floor of a gym locker. The manager (Richard Jenkins) wants nothing to do with it, whereas Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), desperate to have a series of surgeries to look better, and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), a fitness-obsessed doofus, see it as an opportunity to make some easy money. While the two try to carry out their bizarre blackmail attempt, Linda gets involved with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a Treasury employee who is also sleeping with Mrs. Cox. Needless to say, there will be chaos, hilarity and the occasional squirt of blood.
The magic of Burn After Reading lies in how Joel and Ethan Coen approach their satirical handling of all things spook-related: instead of hitting the full parody mode, à la Austin Powers or Johnny English (in which, coincidentally, Malkovich played the villain), they envision a pretty generic spy story (their inspiration, or so they claim at least, was The Bourne Identity) and then just pinpoint the natural absurdity of these scenarios, especially the major coincidence of all the people involved being connected somehow, leading to everyone being paranoid about everything (the classic "walk in the park scene" is a must-see) and a clueless CIA director (J.K. Simmons) wondering what the hell is going on. That's actually the big message the Coens deliver: most of the time, even secret agents have no clue of what they're doing.
The dialogue is, as always with these writers/directors, comedy gold, from Harry's priceless rendition of something as simple as "Well, hello!" to Chad's blackmail phone call ("Osborne Cox? I thought you might be worried... about the security... of your sh*t!"), and all those classy lines are served to perfection by one of the most committed ensemble casts the Coens have ever assembled: regular players like Clooney (partially spoofing his Oscar-winning role in Syriana), McDormand (a brilliant self-referential performance) and Simmons know what to do and comply hilariously, while Swinton, the new girl on the block, uses all her scenes to the max in her reinterpretation of a "cold, stuck-up b*tch". And then we have Pitt and Malkovich, who need a separate mention: the former, dim and proud of it (with a laughable Johnny Suede haircut), is happy to toy with his image playing what is essentially "The Dude" Lebowski's stupid cousin; the latter, doing something of relevance for the first time since he lampooned himself in Being John Malkovich (1999), transcends all the villains he's played in the past with a turn that reeks of borderline craziness and instant comic appeal.
"So, what did we learn?", one character asks at one point. Applied to the audience, the answer would be: a) the Intelligence community is a league of morons; b) this might even be the Coens' funniest movie ever. A gem.