Fun film for the Coen Brothers

Rating: 7/10 (20 October 2008)

The Coen Brothers are some of the finest filmmakers around, and have shown to be able to make excellent serious films like Miller's Crossing, Fargo and No Country for Old Men to screwball comedies like the great the Big Lebowski. Burn After Reading falls into the comedy genre.
The plot is confusing, especially for people who are not use to Coen Brothers films, but I'll give it a shot. Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) quits from the CIA after being demoted and seeks revenge by writing his memoirs. His English wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) has a real dislike for Ozzie and is having an affair with a US Marshall, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who is married to a children's author. Katie wants to divorce Ossie and tries to get a much financial information as possible and copies it and the memoirs onto a CD. However, her lawyers loose the CD in a gym and its found by gym workers Chad (Brad Pitt) and Linda (Frances McDormand). They believe they found top-secret information on the disk. Linda is on the wrong sign of forty, looking for love on the internet and wants some cosmetic surgery. Both Chad and Linda decide to blackmail Ozzie for the sum of $50,000. At the same time, the audience finds out that Harry is a sex addict and goes on the same dating website as Linda to look for partners. He ends up dating Linda and form a relationship when Harry's wife is out of town. When Ozzie refuses to pay Chad and Linda both decide to take the information to Russian embassy and offer to sell it to them. However this leads to them thinking they need to get more information for the Russians and alerts the big-wigs of the CIA. As the web of sex and lies continue during the film it starts to have consequences for the characters.
Burn After Reading has a major trait of Coen Brothers of major characters who have separate aims and goals who end up interacting with each other. This happens in Fargo, No Country for Old Men and the Big Lebowski. As I said, it can be hard to follow if you don't know the work of the directors that well. Some people have described Burn After Reading as a parody of spy films. I didn't see it in the same way and I thought it was more a mick-take of the CIA and Washington D.C. because of their attitude and the bureaucracy. This was symbolised with J.K. Simmons playing the head of the CIA. It does make the CIA look pretty hopeless, which I guess quite a lot of people think is true. Americans may not know this, but in Britain they has been a issue about the intelligence services and government departments loosing sensitive information, and at the same time want to expand the amount of information they can hold on us. It adds a little topic humour to it. They are good acting performances in the film. Brad Pitt steals the show in this film, having most of the laughs and plays a total moron really well. John Malkovich is also going playing an easily angered, anti-social man who's life is falling a part. George Clooney is really good as a sleazy scumbag who is easy to dislike in the film. Frances McDormand is usual chirpy self, but is a little more downhearted compared to her role in Fargo. Tilda Swinton also offer a fine performance as a acid-tongued bitch who only thinks about herself and you wonder why she married Ozzie. The film is violence at times and its the only think that the Coen brothers know how to do: they are not filmmakers who are going to make a childens film in the near future.
The film is a funny, but I was a little disappointed because I excepted more. I was hoping for more laughs in the film. The best performances for comedy were from Pitt and Malkovich. As some critics have said, it looks like the Coen Brothers and the actors had a lot of fun making this film. As well, except for Chad and to a lesser exent Linda, they are no likable characters in Burn After Reading. It is a solid film but it could have been better. To sum up, its too serious to be an out and out comedy, but its too silly to be a serious film.