Burn After Reading

Year: 2008
Running time: 96 minutes

Certificate: 15

Language: English

Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Starring: Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, John Malcovich, Richard Jenkins

Chad: not the brightest spark.

Written at the same time as, made before and released after No Country for Old Men, this is the other side of the Coen coin, as far from that dark moody piece as it's likely possible for the Coens to get. Burn After Reading is the two directors on zany form; elements in common with Raising Arizona, Intolerable Cruelty, Fargo and a fair few others all showing up in the mix. Somehow for me it doesn't reach the giddy heights of their best work, but I would still say it's worth a watch.

Osborne Cox (John Malcovich) is an analyst for the CIA. Resigning in a fit of pique after being demoted due to alcoholism, he decides to have his revenge by writing a tell-all memoir. Osborne's wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is using this latest crisis to make her decision to leave him, milking him for every penny he's got in the process. She is already cheating on him with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a man with a past in personal protection who is a serial philanderer.

A CD-ROM of Osborne's manuscript found in the changing room of a gym, where employees Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) find it and promptly decide to blackmail Osborne, kicks the plot off. This is primarily Linda's idea as she wants to pay for plastic surgery. This does not go according to plan and the farce proceeds to escalate to ludicrous levels, as it must with the 'screwball' genre, which, amongst other things, this most certainly is.

Linda contemplates, while a lovelorn Ted looks on.

There's a star-studded cast, all of which are playing characters dumber than a bag of hammers, to paraphrase another Coen brothers' film. I think the reason I don't like it as much as other films by them may be the lack of anyone to root for; everyone here is stupid, selfish or otherwise unpleasant, with the possible exception of Ted (Richard Jenkins), nursing an unrequited crush on Linda, but he's too much of a minor character to hang your hopes on, unlike The Dude, Marge Gunderson or Ulysses Everett McGill.

Very much in their wheelhouse, this is decent enough, but not top tier Coens.

Score: 6/10

Two reviews from the same publication take almost opposite viewpoints - see these reviews from Andrew and Peter at the Guardian. I find myself more or less in the middle of their perspectives.