"The Seinfeld of spy thrillers." -Doug Walker

Rating: 9/10 (20 July 2016)

When Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) quits his job as a CIA analyst, he decides to write a memoir about his career. His wife Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton) is looking to divorce Osborne, so she copies their bank records on a disc, along with meaningless rambling about the CIA by Osborne. When two gym employees Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) find the disc they mistake it for top secret government documents and decide to use it to blackmail Osborne. When that goes wrong they decide to sell the disc. That's basically the story. There's so much going on that it's easy to get lost, but it's incredibly funny and at the end you just find yourself wondering what happened. It's easy to compare this to The Big Lebowski, another Coen brothers film that pretty much seems to be about nothing. While I wouldn't say that this is as good as that film, Burn After Reading still has the feeling of comedic randomness that only the Coens can provide. Go check it out.