"Well, what have we learned?"

Rating: 9/10 (14 September 2008)

There it is, the Coens have done it again. They've hit another home run by taking what seems like a pretty standard plot and gleefully playing with the audience's expectations. "Burn after Reading" is a hilarious and almost dizzying espionage comedy movie where the true intelligence has no idea what's going on and the lesser intelligence are creating problems over practically no goals at all. Like "The Big Lewbowski", many players factor into the story, but this time you're treated to a much more ensemble cast of characters that frankly have no idea what to do with each other.
Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) quits his job as an analyst for the CIA after he's given a short shrift that sets him off. He decides to write some memoirs to damn the institution that he feels hasn't treated him fairly, while settling into a less-than-stable home life filled with infidelity and backstabbing. Actually, for a movie featuring the CIA as a major part of the character's lives, much more sordid goings on simply involve sex and loneliness than any international hijinks. But of course that's just the point as relationship-by-relationship, Cox' memoirs and computer data end up in the hands of two bumbling gym workers (one (Francis McDormand) of which ends up in a relationship with Cox's wife's lover (George Clooney), further sealing the twisting inter-relations of this group) who of course do the stupid thing and decide to try to get money for it, causing all sorts of scandal as Russians, Americans, public servers, and private investigators all try to figure out what's going on and what's important--because who cares about the memoirs of a third level government analyst, anyway? To the Coen's repertoire of working with great actors over the years is added Tilda Swinton and Brad Pitt, both of whom, of course, do amazingly. Apparently Brad Pitt's role was written just for him after he approached the Coens about doing something with them, and really the movie gets going once Chad appears. Other familiar faces from Coen brother history appear, sometimes in cameos (this is probably the most cameo'd movie of the Coens, ultimately), and all of them seem happy to be involved once again with another great movie by the masters.
But, of course, the joy of seeing good acting and great direction is overshadowed completely by the Coens return to form as they twist expectations. Much has already been made about the fact that the characters are essentially idiots and most of them don't even know what they're striving for, but even better, some of the more significant moments of the plot aren't shown while other smaller moments are lingered on, creating a beautiful branching tree of a world where sometimes the real information is simply in an aside when people are aggravating over the details. This, of course, is pulled off with panache by the Coen brothers' legendary dialog, which of course had the majority of the theatre literally rolling on the floor laughing.
And like most of their movies, the humor comes mostly from a dark place of absurdity that honestly makes one shake one's head and think, "Where do they come up with this stuff?" If anything else, this movie is so unique and original it deserves a look-see just to watch the look on a Ceon brother's newcomer's face as he or she follows the inevitable, but winding course of their morbid fascination with botched crime, paranoia, and dysfunction.
--PolarisDiB