Do you enjoy films by the Coen Brothers? Director Joel and Producer Ethan will often share credit for both duties and when successful, all credit goes to both of them. They tackle numerous genres and find success with most. After last year's critical masterpiece, the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, they have bounced back in an entirely different direction and found a different sort of success here. Time for another dark comedy: BURN AFTER READING.
If you love yourself some John Malkovich then you'll find a heapin' helpin' of fun here with his performance as the befuddled Osborne Cox. The first 15 minutes are all his! Soon enough the other characters begin to appear and the Coens bring out some big guns by the names of George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Both actors are having a great time in the Coens' land (the third trip for Clooney, the first for Pitt). If you're a hater of Pitt for the simple reason that he's a famous pretty boy, then you'll find some definite enjoyment seeing him here as a complete goofus named Chad.
The wife of Osborne Cox (played icily by recent Oscar winner Tilda Swinton) is secretly formulating a divorce from her husband since she's been having an affair with Clooney's character, a government agent. Seeing the two of them together is a strange afterward to their pairing in last year's strong MICHAEL CLAYTON (a definite recommendation if you'd missed it). She downloads some of her husband's computer files for the banking records. This disc is harmless to anyone else, but when it is found at the Hardbodies gym and comes into Chad's possession, it becomes the "MacGuffin" of the movie. [A "MacGuffin" is Alfred Hitchcock's term for the thing in the movie that doesn't matter and the audience doesn't care about, but only serves to make the plot move and put characters together.]
Frances McDormand (Oscar-winning star of her husband Joel's classic FARGO) is a Hardbodies gym employee who feels she needs to remake her entire appearance from lipsuction to facelifts. This isn't cheap. By teaming up with Pitt, they decide to use the "secrets" on the disc to exploit the governement and make some cash. Truly nothing good can come from this, but then where would our movie be?
It's fairly ludicrous to describe anything else that goes on as it's truly just a fun ride taking the time with most of these characters and a surprise to see what happens next. Additional cast members also find time to shine: Richard Jenkins as the love-lorn Hardbodies manager and the scene-stealing J.K. Simmons as the FBI chief who knows nothing about what has gone on. In retrospect, it's fun to see Malkovich letting loose and still probably Pitt's dim-bulb Chad that shines the brightest.
BURN AFTER READING is just over an hour and a half in running time and the ending is a bit abrupt, surely irritating some audience members expecting more. Still, it's really just a peak into some crazy intersecting lives. Due to the effect they've seemed to have on one another, it's just safer to enjoy from a distance, backing out before we become caught up in their shenanigans too.
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