Light and funny spy movie

Rating: 7/10 (31 August 2010)

Every once in a while, there can be some value re-exploring movies since different contexts may yield new reactions. Comedies involving espionage often stupefy characters and situations and then build humor out of dumb and one-dimensional characters doing dumb things. Burn After Reading tries a different route by using intelligent characters, but crafting situations so full of confusion and panic that bad decisions become the only options.
The plot opens with Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) demoted from his CIA analyst position to a less prestigious career. In anger, he quits with a few choice words to his boss. His wife (Tilda Swinton), dissatisfied with her marriage and engaging in a long-term affair with a U.S. Marshal (George Clooney), copies financial records in preparation for divorce. Most likely by accident, she also copies classified documents that are discovered by gym employees played by Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand. Their attempts at blackmail set most of the movie's events in motion.
The comedy for Burn After Reading shines from the character's confusion and the audiences' understanding of the whole picture. When the gym employees first contact Cox about the classified documents, Cox has no idea that anything is missing. In his anger, he assumes the blackmailers broke into his house to steal his memoir. Since Cox refuses to pay $50,000 for his memoir, the gym employees take the classified documents to the Russian embassy and attempt to sell the information. While seeming like a good idea, the absurdity and silliness of trying to sell classified information to the Russians is manifested by the other characters' disbelief. Cox's profanity-ridden tirades, serving to remind the audience how outlandish the whole situation becomes, keep the audience laughing at a plot that superficially should be serious.
A second source for comedy is U.S. Marshall Harry Pfarrer's growing paranoia. Since he's sleeping with the wife of a CIA Agent, he jokingly believes the CIA follows him at the orders of Cox. As the plot continues building, he notices cars following him and men in suits with sunglasses. Suddenly his original joking proposition doesn't seem too unbelievable. The audience knows that Cox doesn't direct the tails, by laughs at the paranoia as Pfarrer suspects everyone as a possible spy.
Burn After Reading is not the gem of Coen Brothers comedy – that spot is probably best reserved for The Big Lebowski. However, spy thrillers seem to come along several times a year and keeping a smart satire in your movie collection to watch after the most recent manifestation of Salt or The American helps foil the absolute seriousness of the paranoid-action-spy-thriller genre. Erik Hagen