Burn After Reading - Movie Review

Burn After Reading is the Coen brother's (Joel and Ethan Coen) first original screenplay since The Man Who Wasn't There back in 2001. Their urge for comic taste, creative violence and a slightly mocking eye for detail are very much visible in this movie. The main star casts of the movie are George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and none other than Brad Pitt who has just won his second best actor trophy today at the Venice Film Festival. Now what great cast, so how can you go wrong?

It is a great spy film, and it's hard to think of anyone less suited to a life of crime than Pitt's character Chad. Chad is a bouncing puppy of a man; a fitness trainer at Hard Bodies gym and the best buddy of fellow Hard Bodies employee Linda (McDormand). Linda has an aching loneliness inside which she attempts to fill with unrewarding hook ups on Internet dating sites and the dream of a new life bought through extensive cosmetic surgery. But all the butt-sculpting and face-stretching that she requires comes at a price, so when the gym cleaner finds a disk that appears to contain what Chad describes as "top secret sensitive shit", Linda scents the chance of a windfall and Chad skips happily along beside her.

The disk in fact contains the whiskey-sodden ramblings that former CIA agent Osbourne Cox (Malkovich, who ties with Pitt for the film's funniest performance) considers to be the beginnings of his memoir. Cox is struggling from the wreckage of a motorway pile-up of personal crises - he has quit his job, his wife (Swinton, delivering her lines with a scrotum-shrivelling ferocity) is tired of him and two imbeciles are trying to blackmail him. Little does Cox know but his wife is having an affair with a man he despises: married family friend and federal marshal Harry (Clooney).

 And in a coincidence that only the Coen brothers are audacious enough to pull off, Harry is also seeing Linda, having met her while sleazing around Internet dating sites.   

The film is a great combination of music, comedy, sex and action. It has got four stars and lists at the top on the box office with an earning of $1,437,723, as mentioned by entertainment times online. It is hilarious, full of entertainment however it lacks the warmth that Coen's movie usually has. And the Brad Pitt's hairstyle, I really find it funny. What do you think? No doubt the movie holds the audience and its worth watching.