Burn After Reading

There's no such thing as a predictable Coen Brothers movie. Not only do you not know what their next move will be when it comes to projects, but you often don't know what their next move will be when you're watching one of their films. Burn After Reading, their follow up to the Oscar-winning No Country For Old Men, is simultaneously a pitch black comedy, a suspense, and a very personal film about people who continue to look for love even though they've already found it. Not anyone could have made these elements work together, but then again Joel and Ethan Coen have been known to defy conventions.

Burn After Reading probably has a plot as packed to the brim and stuffed as Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys. The difference is that the screenplay here cares about the characters, and knows how to use them. The movie gives us an alcoholic ex-CIA agent named Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), his cold and unfeeling wife (Tilda Swinton), a paranoid former Secret Service agent named Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who is unhappy in marriage and working on a "secret project" in his basement (which I would never dream of revealing, as it's the best visual gag in the film), and a pair of employees at a local gym named Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt). The characters are brought together when a CD containing top secret government information is found on the floor of the gym by Linda and Chad. Being "good samaritans", they track down the owner, discover it's Osborne, and decide to blackmail him for a large amount of money so Linda can afford some cosmetic surgery. And when that doesn't work, they try to sell the information to the Russian Embassy. These characters are also connected in other ways, such as the fact that Harry is a frequent womanizer, and is seeing both Osborne's wife and Linda at different times whenever he can get away from his wife.

I have revealed very little, and plan to keep it that way. The joy of the movie is how the plot builds, and how the Coen Brothers are able to keep the action and the storytelling under the slightest amount of control - Just chaotic enough to be absurd, but not so much so that the characters never become cartoon caricatures of who they're supposed to be. There's actually a lot of joy to be found here. There's the joy of the dialogue, which is frequently very smart and funny. (One of my favorite lines comes in the film's first scene, when Osborne finds out he's being fired because of his "drinking problem", and his response is, "You're a Mormon - Next to you, everyone has a drinking problem!") There's also the joy of how the movie frequently flies in the face of expectations. Just when you think you've figured out the tone of the film, it shocks you by going in a different direction. In the wrong hands, the movie could have come across as schizophrenic. I don't think anyone can make me laugh and be terrified at the same time like the Coens. And yes, I mean that as a complement.

As a matter of fact, I've already gotten in a debate with someone else who's seen the film as to wether it's a comedy with thriller elements, or if it's a thriller with comedic elements. I personally view it as a very dark comedy, similar to their earlier film, Fargo. While not quite as memorable as that classic, it shares the same trait of ordinary people being drawn into a situation that they think they have control of, until it starts to grow bigger than they could have ever imagined. The entire cast plays it straight, however, no matter how absurd the material sometimes gets. Consider Brad Pitt's character. His character is slow-witted and hardly seems to know what's going on around him, but Pitt does not play him as an over the top buffoon. He's a realistic one, one that you may have met, and then brushed off as simply not being all there. This is important, especially late in the film. His character would not work if he had played Chad broadly or over the top, and the movie is wise enough to realize it.

The rest of the cast is excellent all around, with Clooney and McDormand taking top honors. He plays a man who would be charming if his eyes weren't always darting about, looking for suspicious cars following him whenever he's jogging, and if he could just settle down and realize what he has in his life. She plays a woman who is very lonely, and believes the only way she'll ever get someone to love her is with cosmetic surgery, which sets the plot into motion when Chad and her discover the CD. She's driven by desperation and the desire to be desired by someone else. There's a certain poignancy to their scenes together that I enjoyed. We understand that neither can truly be happy, but are looking for happiness in each other. John Malkovich is also very intense and often funny as the man in the middle of it all. I suppose if there was a weak link, it would be Tilda Swinton, and that's only because the movie doesn't spend enough time with her. Special mention must also be given to David Rasche and J.K. Simmons as a pair of CIA superiors who get a lot of big laughs in their few scenes as they try to sort the plot out.

I'd like to close this review by saying another thing I love about Burn After Reading, and that is how the movie finds humor in everyday things. There's a small scene I loved that had nothing to do with the movie itself. Frances McDormand's character is on the phone, trying to get a hold of someone about her surgical procedure. She gets a recording, and we get a small routine as she desperately tries to talk to a live person, while the recorded voice frequently misunderstands and misdirects her. It's not just the fact that it's something everyone can relate to. The way the scene is written and played is so honest, it's almost brilliant in its own way.

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