Burn After Reading

The Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading presents another tangled mess of lovesick lechers, vitriolic vixens, and hapless half-wits, with problems, which become worse, as time passes.

It's really well done.

The plot follows Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) after his quasi-dismissal from the CIA (his boss being played by Sledgehammer lead David Rasche). His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with fun-loving-sex-crazed Treasury Agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who has never fired his gun. A copy of Cox's memoirs accidentally ends up in the hands of Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who, with the help of fellow Hardbodies Gym employee Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), decides to blackmail Cox based upon the information inside. In between, a lot of awkward, lonely, gentle, and narcissistic people end up in one embarrassing situation after another, often confused, occasionally, dead. Me found it to be preferable to No Country for Old Men and the Coen brothers' best since O Brother, Where Art Thou? However, as a pair, Burn After Reading and No Country for Old Men show the best of both sides of their oeuvre, one illustrating the conniving manners in which they amusingly nuance their tragedies, the other demonstrating the bitter, helpless mediocrity that dramatically distills their comedy.

I'm not sure if this was the intent in casting Brad Pitt and George Clooney, but note how within their opening scenes they each struggle to play a role that differs from those they've generically rendered in films such as the Ocean's 11 trilogy. However, as their screen-time increases, Clooney's character falls back into his traditional trajectory, but Pitt's becomes more and more endearing, tantalizingly reminiscent of his True Romance cameo. Note how Burn's plot structurally provides an outlandish portrait of Clooney's ego with unconscious retributive satisfaction (in regards to Pitt's multi-dimensional diversity), thereby covertly explaining why he received top billing, when it should have obviously gone to Malkovich.

A lot of people want to make a quick buck, but can't, and still try too anyways, all the time. A lot of people with authoritative positions don't really know what's going on, and, probably never will, yet, they have important decisions to make, many of which end up being wrong, yet are remembered with reverence. And if some people spent more time thinking about environmentally friendly ways of boosting the economy than they do about sex, we'd probably have a hell-of-a-lot less pollution, and really cheap clean-running fuel efficient cars (in which to have sex).

Think about it.