MOVIE REVIEW: BURN AFTER READING

BURN AFTER READING

Six Cows

The Coen brothers keep making movies, and I’m not sure why. How many home runs can you hit before it becomes too easy, even boring? Had it been me, I would have stopped after Raising Arizona. Surely by Fargo, I’d have cashed my chips and been gone. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Forgetaboutit. In the wake of last year’s brilliant No Country For Old Men, what more could they possibly have to prove?

                 

Well, thank God the Coen’s don’t listen to me. Burn After Reading, while perhaps not their absolute best, is so off the wall, so surprising and unexpected, and so deeply funny that you hope they live forever. Somebody’s got to make comedies for smart people, for adults. And make no mistake, this is a movie for adults, but more on that later.

                 

The ensemble cast that includes George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Francis McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, and J.K. Simmons is absolutely superb. McDormand is shallow in a deliciously over-the-top way, Clooney is at his smarmy best, Malkovich is a raving nutter, J.K. Simmons is the epitome of deadpan humor, and Pitt has so much fun with his role as an airheaded fop that you wonder if it was even necessary to pay him. The Coen’s ability to attract the perfect actor for each role – it’s impossible to imagine who might have played the CIA director’s role if not for Simmons – is only equaled by their ability to tame this many raging egos. But such is their stature that it all looks so harmonious in its disunity.

               

As mentioned before, this is a movie for adults. The language is often brutal, much of the comedy is course, and, well, these are not people you’d want to introduce to your children. That said, there is a difference between Burn After Reading and an unconscionable pile of dung like Step Brothers – Burn After Reading is not meant to appeal to children, whereas Step Brothers is the movie equivalent of candy cigarettes. Of course, many may still find the profanity in Burn After Reading regrettable and unnecessary – and they’d be right. Consider yourself amply warned, and choose accordingly.

                

 Burn After Reading certainly isn’t one of the Coen’s great films, but it is very, very good. Heck, for most film-makers it would be the absolute pinnacle of their career. I give Burn After Reading six misanthropic, lunatic spy-cows.