Burn After Reading

Not the Coen brothers' best film.

The cast itself is a promising six-degrees-of-separation. George Clooney, from O Brother, Where Art Thou. George Clooney and Brad Pitt, from Ocean's Eleven/Twelve/Thirteen. George Clooney and Tilda Swinton, from Michael Clayton. Frances McDormand, a Coen spouse, from Fargo.

And John Malkovich, from, well, everything.

All of the above mentioned films are better than Burn After Reading. George Clooney is far better as the Dapper Dan Man in O Brother than here. Frances McDormand is far better as the pregnant Marge in Fargo than here.

Oddly enough, the best performances are from those who are novices to the Coen entourage--Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, and John Malkovich. The funniest lines, and moments, are all Pitt's, as he plays counter to suave. Tilda Swinton is brilliant as a cold redhead bitch pediatrician with absolutely no bedside manner, unless she's under the sheets with Clooney. And John Malkovich is, well, John Malkovich. He's like Kleenex; he's his own brand.

The film opens with a wide shot of Google Earth, panning down over North America until it drops on CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where we find Malkovich's character, Osborne Cox, a veteran CIA agent, losing his job because "he drinks too much." He then delivers one of the best lines of the entire movie: "F*** it, you're a Mormon--next to you everyone drinks too much!"

Having lost his job, he heads home to Georgetown to tell his uptight pediatrician wife, Katie, who's so wrapped up in preparations for a cocktail party she's hosting that evening that she can't manage to find the time to hear him deliver the news, news she was never destined to take well, even though he alters it somewhat by telling her that he quit voluntarily, and yes, without severance, without benefits, without anything. She's unimpressed by his plan to write his memoirs in his post-CIA ennui.

Guests at the cocktail party include George Clooney's character, Harry Pfarrer, another government suit who used to work for State but now works for Treasury, and in twenty-two years of carrying one has "never had to fire his gun," and his children's book author wife, Sandy.

Unbenownst to Osborne, his wife and Harry have been doing the horizontal mambo.

Katie Cox, concerned about the recent reversal of her husband's fortunes, privately consults with a divorce attorney about the prospect of ending her marriage, and is advised that she should research the family finances prior to serving him with papers. When Osborne is out of the house attending a Princeton alumni dinner, she goes into his computer in the basement and starts copying files.

Across town, in the Hardbodies Gym, we find Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), a forty-something single female who cruises internet dating sites and yearns to "reinvent herself" through cosmetic surgery, and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), a charming dullard of a personal trainer whose reach exceeds his grasp. When someone finds a computer disc on the floor of the ladies' locker room, which appears to have highly sensitive classified information on it, Linda and Chad see a ticket to a brighter future. The gym manager, Ted, a former Greek Orthodox priest endearingly played by Richard Jenkins, wants nothing to do with it.

Once Chad uncovers the source of the classified information, one "Osborne Cox," he hatches a plan to return the disc to Cox, for a small finder's fee ("Good Samaritan Tax"), aided by Linda.

Meanwhile Linda's dating misadventures lead her to an internet dating connection with Harry, whose wife is out of town on a several-city book tour.

Katie Cox has divorce papers served on Osborne, changes the locks and puts his bags on the street. Telling Harry that all he needs now is to free himself of his own marriage in order for them to be together only sends him further the other direction, yearning for his wife's return, only to learn she is also planning to divorce him.

There's enough cloak-and-dagger misadventure here to keep people guessing who's following in the black car in the rear view mirror.

Best moments are Pitt's comic turns, but the movie tends to be more dark than comic. It doesn't take dark to its brilliant and well written extreme, like No Country for Old Men, nor mix the dark with the comic perfectly, like Fargo. It doesn't have the witty repartee of Raising Arizona or O Brother, Where Art Thou.

The key to understanding Burn After Reading is really found in a climactic scene between Osborne Cox and another important character in the film, when he lets the audience know, if they didn't already, that's he really fed up with dealing with morons and imbeciles. It's that frustration with the dribs and drabs of life that spins the entire misadventure of a film from firing to infidelity to insecurity to mistrust to what the CIA superior, played especially well by Juno's dad J. K. Simmons, accurately calls a "G-D clusterf***." (Cue Marge's line from the end of Fargo, "And for what? For a little bit of money.")

I won't spoil the ending for you except to assure you that Linda does finally get her cosmetic surgery, if not her heart's desire.

I was reminded of Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal's misadventures with the multiple plaid suitcases in "What's Up Doc?"

Eunice Burns is a better Linda Litzke. And What's Up Doc? is a better film.