Not the Coen brothers' best ,but fun either way

Rating: 7/10 (6 November 2008)

Mystery, mayhem, massive mix ups of people. Misunderstandings and wrong interpretations. Deceit, trickery and complete astonishment. That'd be the keywords for this film. It's not the first comedy done by the Coen brothers and I surely hope it won't be the last. After their previous, No Country For Old Men, it fell a bit strange and it might even have pulled a partly wrong audience to the cinema, but it works for me, I've been watching their films ever since I found myself crying with laughter over Raising Arizona and have been amazed at their combined talents quite a few times.
Anyway, this film starts rolling when two workers in a health/fitness center find a CD full of what they think to be government secrets. The trail of events that starts there is far fetched but not so far it becomes entirely unbelievable and the trail of people that is followed through the film is both long and highly varying. The effect of that is that there is always something to do on the screen, making the film rather entertaining. Some of the characters fall a small bit out of place but not so far that they become a true nuisance.
Finally, the show is stolen by three players: Brad Pitt who returns a small bit to the marvelous role of a madman he played in Twelve Monkeys by putting down a somewhat slow health-care/fitness agent here, Frances McDormand who spotlessly plays a somewhat neurotic coworker of Pitt and John Malkovich who puts down the angered special agent with a class only he can. The rest of the casting is very good too, but for me the above three really pulled the film.
All in all this is not the best work by the Coen brothers (for me Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski outclass this one as comedies) but it delivers and that's good enough for me.
7 out of 10 secrets uncovered