Burn After Reading

Rating: 7/10 (24 April 2011)

The Cohens take their movie to Washington, D.C. Their movie concerns a recently unemployed CIA analyst (John Malkovich) with serious anger issues who has developed memoirs of his life/career. He loses the disc which contains this information, and it is discovered by a dopey employee (Brad Pitt) of a gym called HARDBODIES. Pitt notices a lot of CIA jargon, believing this disc contains codes or other private information worth some money, and soon fellow employee Francis McDormand, who has major self-esteem problems, desperately yearning for cosmetic surgeries to repair a body she is ashamed of, is involved. It is really McDormand who urges Pitt (but he needs little more than a nudge) to pursue the moolah, although Malkovich really isn't exactly loaded. Malkovich has a dentist wife (Tilda Swinton), a control freak, who is having an affair with a former member of the Treasury Department (George Clooney). Clooney is married to an author of children's books, always on trips to publicize her works. So this disc, which really isn't anything that special, causes a lot of ruckus. Murder eventually enters the picture along with the blackmail and rampant adulteries. I did find one scene particularly shocking: McDormand is so desperate for a payday she takes the disc to a Russian embassy hoping they will give her money in exchange for supposed American secrets! This is a woman who really wants to change her body image! Pitt might earn some laughs as a ditz, and Clooney soon succumbs to paranoia when he accidentally shoots someone who startles him and notices that there is a mysterious figure following him around—he does soon learn of who this person is, and, as most of the situations in this movie, it's really a misunderstanding that gets far more out of control than need be. I think the best role in the movie goes to Richard Jenkins, the owner of HARDBODIES, who has it bad for McDormand although feelings aren't mutual because she is looking for a bohunk. The film features an assortment of adulteries such as Clooney sleeping with both Swinton and McDormand. Clooney's wife actually has a younger hunk on tour with her. Malkovich gets locked out his home and banking/savings accounts drained by Swinton who really asserts her seriousness about a new relationship with a commitment-phobic Clooney too afraid to confront anyone that would propose a threat to their love affair. J.K. Simmons has a small part as a head honcho in the CIA, bewildered at the events transpiring around Malkovich's disc, often receiving reports from his equally baffled agent. Simmons just wants all of this nonsense to subside, accepting whatever it takes to stop the bleeding. Malkovich, with little real screen time, is a ticking time bomb just on the cusp of erupting, and a character makes the unfortunate mistake of attempting to help McDormand retrieve extra information on the ex-CIA analyst at the wrong time. A lot of characters end up at the wrong place at the wrong time, or make poor decisions which backfire. Although, the ending does show that McDormand might just get her wish..
The film is built on reactions from the cast. A variety of f-bombs surface in the dialogue regularly, and how all the characters tie to each other is clever in its execution. It is amazing how avarice so drives everything in the movie...McDormand wanting her surgeries, Cooney needing to feed his lust, Malkovich unable to recover from a humble downgrade from a job he took so much pride in, Swinton only interested in controlling those in her life, Pitt a comic foil in McDormand's obsessive quest for enough cash but himself wanting a little payday for the disc's discovery. Jenkins, bless his heart, tries to appeal to McDormand's good graces and pays a heavy price in doing so, while JK Simmons receives numerous reports at his desk in the CIA about the whole mess, just exasperated by how Osbourne Cox's analyst's *dismissal* has accumulated into such a situation.