Comedy and Violence

Rating: Null/10 (22 July 2009)

This isn't a typical laugh-out-loud comedy, which in a way means that it *is* a typical Coen Brother's comedy. Laced with noir trimmings, black humour and some vicious violence it's a story that could just as easily have been told straight. In fact, you can almost imagine the brothers Coen rubbing their chins contemplatively as they try to decide which way to film it. They cast Brad Pitt and George Clooney in key roles, so maybe they wanted to leave their options open.
Pitt and Clooney are terrific in this. For an actor with matinée idol looks Clooney in unusually adept at playing amiable doofuses. In this one he's a serial philanderer who hooks up with Frances McDormand, a gym employee who has formed a blackmailing partnership with fellow employee Brad Pitt, a not-too-bright but enthusiastic guy with carefully coiffured hair. They found a disc in the gym changing room containing the memoirs of 'retired' CIA agent John Malkovitch after it was accidentally left there by his wife (Tilda Swinton) who was gathering information in preparation for a divorce. Clooney and Malkovitch are former colleagues who despise each other. The story is as involved as it reads but it is quite easy to follow.
The violence in the film doesn't always sit easily with the humour. One murder is so totally unexpected that it sort of shocks you out of the film for a moment, and leaves you half-expecting some kind of twist that will bring the murdered character back to life. But then, I suppose that's the Coen's way: they can take a story and characters that aren't quite realistic, lulling us into a kind of false sense of security that nothing truly disagreeable is going to happen to them, and then inject moments of brutal and realistic violence just to shake us up.
This maybe isn't the best of the Coen's films, but it's pretty good; and it suggests that they're a long way from running out of fresh ideas.