The films of directing team Joel and Ethan Coen can usually be described as dark and weird, and this is especially true of their comedies. Their latest film, Burn After Reading, is another example of combining their own unusual brand of humor with high-caliber filmmaking.
Osborne Cox, played by John Malkovich, is a recently fired CIA analyst that sets off to write a tell-all memoir about his days in the government agency. A disc that's full of notes for his book ends up in the hands of gym employees Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), who attempt to blackmail Cox with the disc so Linda can get money for her plastic surgeries. Meanwhile, Cox's wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with U.S. Treasury agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who is cheating on his own wife and his mistress.
That's just the beginning. Everything goes downhill for the characters until the film reaches a violent breaking point, where things do not go well for the blackmailers, Cox or Pfarrer, who doesn't know how he ended up in the middle of all of this.
Judging by the brief synopsis, it may seem that the Coen Brothers have made a spy comedy, instead of what it really is: a biting satire of American vanity through the prism of a spy movie.
Litzke's actions are made through her desire to be as attractive as the people who work out at her gym. Osborne thinks that the details he can put in his memoir will bring down the CIA, even though he was only a low-level employee. Pfarrer thinks he's being followed because of his cheating ways, but he doesn't know by whom. The only character void of vanity is Chad, who also appears to be void of anything.
Due to the nature of the subject being satirized, Burn After Reading can be an uncomfortable movie to watch. It's hard to care about characters that are so vain. Fortunately, a performance such as Clooney's, where he subverts his usual charm into something of a dirt bag, and Malkovich's, whose rants against the CIA are a highlight of the movie, keep the audience engaged even as the violence begins to rise and the story becomes more complicated.-
17 Archives
Ethan Goldsmith
200809158651midsize.gif
