Movie review: Burn After Reading

By Matt Arehart

Thursday, September 18, 2008

In modern cinema, one phrase is constant: The Coen brothers make good movies. This holds true for their latest outing, Burn After Reading. With an all-star cast led by George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt and John Malkovich, Burn After Reading is a dark-as-night comedy with enough shock and awe to keep any movie buff’s jaw on the floor.

The movie opens in the middle of a well-lit corridor with the sound of dress shoes clicking against the marble floor. When the owner of the shoes, Osborne Cox (Malkovich), is forced into quitting his post as a low-level CIA agent, the mania begins.

The plot expands when Cox’s wife (Swinton) decides to divorce her husband for her lover, Harry (Clooney). At her lawyer’s suggestion, she copies a disk of all Cox’s financial records, which falls into the idiot hands of Chad and Linda (Pitt and McDormand). The dynamically dimwitted duo then attempts to blackmail Cox.

What makes this movie so darn watchable is the crispness of the acting and the quirkiness of the script. Pitt and McDormand are impeccable as an idiotic pair of wannabe criminals, and no other actors could have played the roles of Cox and Harry quite as well as Malkovich and Clooney.

The Coen brothers, known for their long string of excellent movies— including Fargo and last year’s Oscar-sweeping No Country for Old Men—have hit another home run with Burn After Reading. The dialogue is spot-on, and the twists and turns are not at all predictable. Just wait till you see what Harry is building in his basement.

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