Burn After ReadingNo one ever said that the world of secret intelligence had to be smart. Burn After Reading is a wickedly funny black comedy and political thriller farce by the Coen brothers. The film features an assortment of flawed, self-absorbed, vain, dishonest, and even dumb characters who collide with one another in Washington D.C. They pursue their own interests, constantly playing the odds growing increasingly out of their favor, as their respective crises spiral out of control. All the while, the CIA stares down on their little misadventures, scratching their heads like simpletons staring into an ant farm.
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Burn After Reading begins with the firing of CIA analyst, Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), who takes it hard and decides to write his drunken memoirs. His icy bully of a wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton)--the unlikeliest of pediatricians--has been sleeping with Osbourne's "frenemy", a deputy U.S. Marshal and sex addict, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney). After she discovers that her husband is without replenishing income, she decides to divorce him...but not before swiping his financial info per her lawyer's counsel and burning it onto a compact disc. Unfortunately, a legal clerk of said lawyer, and patron of a local gym whimsically called "Hardbodies", leaves the disc behind at the gym, only to be discovered by the staff, including the vapid doofus Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt). Chad colludes with his co-worker, the hopelessly narcissistic Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), to extort money from Osbourne, believing the disc contains secrets of the intelligence community. At the risk of spoiling the entire plot, the point of this is that the interweaving motives in Burn After Reading ricochet off of one another and explode exponentially from this confederacy of dunces in a way that recalls Shakespeare comedies like "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Amost all of these egocentric characters are undone by their failure to be humble and acknowledge what their selfishness does to others. Even the manager of Hardbodies--a lonely heart named Ted (Richard Jenkins), who has a crush on Linda--is sucked down into the vortex of his employees' insane idea to blackmail a former analyst over his memoirs. The setting of Washington D.C., the seat of power for the nation, is depicted as an environment which fosters this mix of paranoia and self-aggrandizing indulgence. Black sedans with tinted windows slow down as they approach Harry while he is jogging, adding to his anxiety by degrees, and virtually everyone has a fixation on "finding someone", or is cheating on someone with someone else, or is convinced they must change themselves no matter the cost to fulfill their image of perfection. In such a completely mad world, it is a liability to be sane.
Burn After Reading is a deliberate spoof of the spy genre, even when the espionage angle is barely present. Scenes are deliberately framed to make it look as though the characters are being watched. Palmer Smith (David Rasche), the ineffectual bureaucrat responsible for firing Osbourne, has been monitoring these events, and reports his jumbled, aimless discoveries to his superior (J. K. Simmons), as some secretive conspiracy in the works, and not as the pointless bumbling of nitwits that it really is. Burn After Reading underscores the absurdity of bureaucracy; as Osbourne says to his father while considering writing his memoirs, the intelligence community used to have a "mission". Regardless, the world of intelligence in Burn After Reading couldn't, in fact, be farther from intelligent. It's reasonable to assume that most people have a cynical view of bureaucracy, a complex and self-serving institution which exists solely for its own justification, or worse, to impede progress for seemingly arbitrary reasons. The characters in Burn After Reading live in an exaggerated version of reality. Osbourne flies into manic fits of anger, swearing a mean streak, and drinks when he gets frustrated. Chad spends all of his time working on his body, when his brain is truly starving. When he does bang his two brain cells together, he finds himself over his head in an extortion scheme, fueled by Linda's self-righteous indignation when Osbourne doesn't agree to pay a "good Samaritan reward". Harry's self-respect is batted around like a shuttlecock, acting servile to his wife, Katie, and even Linda, getting tangled up in his deceptions and self-deception. Harry seems to be fostering some kind of clandestine hobby in his basement, intimated to be related to his job; but the shocking revelation when he reveals his pet project to Linda makes it clear just how singular his obsession with self-gratification has become. The Coen brothers make virtually none of the main characters in Burn After Reading likable, in turn making the constant string of unfortunate events befalling them seem not so much like tragedy but poetic justice--the natural end for a batch of self-absorbed weirdos representing a cross-section of the weirdos that occupy the seat of power in our country. Heaven help us all.
Recommended for: Fans of a warped and hilarious comedy about a group of unstable and selfish denizens of Washington D.C.--contrary to that description, none of them are politicians. Burn After Reading is a smart and sardonic spoof of the spy movie, that also reminds the audience that leaked information is not always what it seems, and "security" is a matter of perspective.
Burn After Reading is a deliberate spoof of the spy genre, even when the espionage angle is barely present. Scenes are deliberately framed to make it look as though the characters are being watched. Palmer Smith (David Rasche), the ineffectual bureaucrat responsible for firing Osbourne, has been monitoring these events, and reports his jumbled, aimless discoveries to his superior (J. K. Simmons), as some secretive conspiracy in the works, and not as the pointless bumbling of nitwits that it really is. Burn After Reading underscores the absurdity of bureaucracy; as Osbourne says to his father while considering writing his memoirs, the intelligence community used to have a "mission". Regardless, the world of intelligence in Burn After Reading couldn't, in fact, be farther from intelligent. It's reasonable to assume that most people have a cynical view of bureaucracy, a complex and self-serving institution which exists solely for its own justification, or worse, to impede progress for seemingly arbitrary reasons. The characters in Burn After Reading live in an exaggerated version of reality. Osbourne flies into manic fits of anger, swearing a mean streak, and drinks when he gets frustrated. Chad spends all of his time working on his body, when his brain is truly starving. When he does bang his two brain cells together, he finds himself over his head in an extortion scheme, fueled by Linda's self-righteous indignation when Osbourne doesn't agree to pay a "good Samaritan reward". Harry's self-respect is batted around like a shuttlecock, acting servile to his wife, Katie, and even Linda, getting tangled up in his deceptions and self-deception. Harry seems to be fostering some kind of clandestine hobby in his basement, intimated to be related to his job; but the shocking revelation when he reveals his pet project to Linda makes it clear just how singular his obsession with self-gratification has become. The Coen brothers make virtually none of the main characters in Burn After Reading likable, in turn making the constant string of unfortunate events befalling them seem not so much like tragedy but poetic justice--the natural end for a batch of self-absorbed weirdos representing a cross-section of the weirdos that occupy the seat of power in our country. Heaven help us all.
Recommended for: Fans of a warped and hilarious comedy about a group of unstable and selfish denizens of Washington D.C.--contrary to that description, none of them are politicians. Burn After Reading is a smart and sardonic spoof of the spy movie, that also reminds the audience that leaked information is not always what it seems, and "security" is a matter of perspective.