ebullient

Rating: 6/10 (13 September 2008)

Greetings again from the darkness. As usual, high expectations often lead to disappointment when it comes to movies. Being a huge Coen Brothers fan, I can happily re-watch just about any of their films at just about any moment (exceptions would by The LadyKillers and Intolerable Cruelty). Despite a tremendous cast, "Burn After Reading" just seems to go nowhere, I didn't have much fun getting there! The two best characters in this one are Brad Pitt as a perky, dim-witted personal trainer (replete with Vanilla Ice/Eraserhead hair) and John Malkovich as former CIA agent Osbourne Cox. In A-typical Coen Brothers fashion, most of the other characters pretty much fall flat ... in an over-the-top kind of way.
The amazing cast is completed by Tilda Swinton playing Malkovich's bitchy wife who is sleeping with/dominating George Clooney's character, who is a paranoid sleazeball and seems to have no real purpose other than to also be sleeping with Frances McDormand, who is partnering with goof-ball Brad Pitt to blackmail Malkovich out of $50,000. Richard Jenkins is the fitness center manager who has a quiet crush on McDormand and is fed up with Pitt.
There are some funny moments and certainly a couple of pure Coen Brothers scenes, but the story and the characters just don't seem complete, which is the biggest surprise and disappointment. I can only assume that Ethan and Joel felt the same way, and that the J.K. Simmons character speaks for them when he speaks lines such as "Well we really don't have much, do we?".