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Burn After Reading

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Cert: 15

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Dir: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen. Cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, JK Simmons, Richard Jenkins, David Rasche

 

Description: Former CIA agent Osbourne Cox pens his memoirs but an electronic copy of the manuscript inadvertently ends up in the possession of gym employee Chad Feldheimer and co-worker Linda Litzke. They hit upon the brilliant idea of blackmailing Osbourne in exchange for the safe return of the memoirs. The former agent refuses to pay the ransom so Chad and Linda head to the Russian embassy, intent on selling Osbourne's secrets to the enemy. Meanwhile, Osbourne's wife Katie is engaged in an extra marital affair with serial womaniser Harry Pfarrer, who has begun dating lonely Linda.

Country: US. 2008. 95mins

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Brothers at play in Burn After Reading

 

Dinner date: Linda (Frances McDormand) braves the attentions of the womanising Harry (George Clooney)

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There are two views of Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest effort. One is that, after winning multiple Oscars for No Country For Old Men, they have finally surrendered to Hollywood and commercialism with a basinful of stars camping it up in a comedy about Washington paranoia that means very little after you have finished chuckling. The other is that most of the brothers’ efforts mean very little but are executed with such flair that you don’t notice it: it’s their right to play their new-found popularity for all it’s worth.

I am inclined to the latter view, since to ask them to be Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese, let alone Orson Welles, would be on the hopeful side. Their films mean nothing more than good cinema — there’s nothing intrinsically wrong in that, even if there are times when you feel that anyone who makes them as well as this ought to be able to give us something to chew on, too.

We are first introduced here to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where intelligence operative Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is rudely taken off his Balkan desk.

“You have a drinking problem,” says one of his associates, clearly hoping for Cox’s job. “ F**k you, Peck,” replies the irate Cox, “You’re a Mormon.”

He certainly has a drinking problem and it is understandable when we get back to his Georgetown home, where his hellish wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton), is preparing a cocktail do at which guests will include Harry (George Clooney), her ex-Secret Service lover. There’s clearly a divorce on the horizon even though Harry is an inveterate womaniser and is unlikely to remain solely in Katie’s bed for longer than necessary. He goes a little pale when contemplating being hooked for good.

Cox settles down to get his revenge on her, the world in general and particularly on officialdom by dictating a tell-all book into his tape recorder. He gets most of it onto a computer disc which he then loses in Hard Bodies gym.

Two of the employees there, Linda (Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt), find the disc and embark on a botched attempt to persuade Cox to pay for its return. I could go on, but it’s not strictly necessary. This is a farcical comedy of manners that parodies almost everybody and everything. It depends for its success not on any serious conclusions, or even on a rather abrupt, surprise ending, but on its performances and its broad character drawing.

This it manages. Pitt takes the mickey out of himself with an absurd hairdo and the manner of one of those recognisable LA keep-fit moron types. Clooney is almost as funny as a svelte and totally obvious ladies’ man who knows what he wants but is always likely to be bested by anyone with an ounce of intuition or sophistication.

Even better are McDormand and Swinton. The former is always watchable even in lousy films. Here, she seeks the boodle from Cox to pay for one of those facelifts and complete surgical makeovers that could change her none too prepossessing personality and destroy her looks.

Hollywood has now belatedly discovered Swinton, though you suspect she will find it trickier to please the suits than most Brit acting alumni who’ve made it across the water. Here, she is such a terrifying bitch that it is a surprise that Clooney can manage it in bed with her.

That leaves Malkovich, who has fun with Cox’s drunken rages and a general manic irritation. At one point he tells an intruder in his house: “You’re part of a league of morons!” You believe his stingy take on the world absolutely.

The fact that Burn After Reading is only just over 90 minutes in total works in its favour. A longer film would have necessitated a more convincing ending and a storyline less flimsy.

As it is, the Coens have constructed, with the aid of some of the best players in the business, a comedy that, like those other brothers called Marx, is spitefully able to make monkeys of practically everybody.

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