missing thirty minutes?

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2010)

Something happened to this film. It just fell off a cliff after 1.5 hours. It could have been another great, along the lines of FARGO, but for some reason everything was shut down in a hurry with a seriously compressed critique of the CIA. In fact, until I listened to the lyrics of the song accompanying the credits, I didn't even fully grasp that the Coen brothers actually took themselves to be offering a CIA critique!
Unfortunately, the critique of fitness gym culture and internet dating types dominated this film-in-progress. Too bad, for the world could really use a good CIA critique. In fact, there was plenty of time (about thirty minutes) that went unused--everything was abruptly called to a halt. (I am still wondering what the explanation for this was: production deadline? competing projects for Pitt and Clooney? who knows???) What cannot be denied is that this was a missed opportunity to pull all of the loose ends together in such a way so as to have constructed an intelligent farce.
Instead, BURN AFTER READING is a somewhat stupid farce that made fun of people who don't really need help in that regard. Everyone already knows that those people are a bunch of losers. What not everyone knows is what a bunch of losers so-called analysts are. But rather than offering viewers something that they might not already know, the Coen brothers chose in this case to state the obvious--about a thousand times--and then pull the curtain on what could have been an excellent film. Disappointing.