Burn After Reading is what you get whenever you take a Cold War spy thriller, and replace all the geniuses and action heroes with really stupid, and selfish to a fault people. Sure that might not sound dramatic or so, but it's really funny. This is one of those Coen films that is so preposterous, yet completely hilarious that you almost don't notice that this film's story is a mess. I just did not care. Why? There's a lot to it other than just the plot. It exaggerates, and plays by it's own rules, and it's just odd. The plot is complicated. John Malkovitch is a government worker who is fired, and he decides to write a memoir. His wife (Tilda Swinton) wants to divorce him because she hates him, and is banging George Clooney's married character. When she takes a disk of the financial records of the computer, and they get left somewhere Brad Pitt a hilarious gym trainer finds them. He then talks to Linda (Frances Mcdormand) who needs money for surgeries, and is also banging George Clooney. Chad, and Linda take the memoirs for no reason really to the Russians. I won't spoil anymore, but that's only the start of it. As I said before the movie suffers for all of this, but I also gave the key ingredient to why it works so well. This movie is really funny. It takes a lot to take something like this from being stupid to funny, but the Coen's as usual have enough comedy in the characters to keep it all going. These guys are so stupid, but it's really funny to see them get what is coming to them. Also the actors are all game for it. The bouncing, and incredibly stupid Chad (played by Brad Pitt) is a standout. I've seen him do a lot of serious roles. This is not one of them. You don't see Brad Pitt. You see this grown man acting like a 15 year old with the energy of a 5 year old that has just drank 5 sodas hopping around, and it's really funny. There's another scene where George Clooney thinks he realized what is going on. I said thinks he does because he's wrong, but the way his face warps in this scene into fear is just great. Everyone is really game for this wildly quirky movie, and that really does help it. Especially because the story seems overcrowded. This is not one of the better Coen films I have seen (those are still The Big Lebowski, and True Grit), but this is a quirky, and hilarious film does work. I give Burn After Reading a 9 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |