I just got back from watching the Coen Bros' newest film, "Burn After Reading." My verdict: two thumbs up, with very few reservations. I admit, it's not the dark and majestic masterpiece that was "No Country for Old Men." But it's not quite as unrelentingly grim, either. It's good to know that the Coens still can have a laugh or two.
Indeed, they have at least a laugh or seven or eight. A good chunk of those come courtesy Brad Pitt, playing the gym-obsessed, bleach-blond tipped Chad. Chad, like so many other Coen Brothers characters, has gotten into something completely over his head. He and Linda Letzke (Coen regular Frances McDormand) find a CD packed with what Chad calls "security shit."
The shit in question is property of Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich, who provides most of the non-Brad-Pitt related laughs). Cox is in a bad way. He's lost his job, his wife's cheating on him with cheerfully vulgar treasury agent Harry Pfarer (George Clooney, whose beard brings up memories of Syriana), and he just lost a copy of his memoirs--or his memoi's, as he insists on calling them. Of course, this is what the disc that Chad and Linda have gotten their hands on.
Things soon escalate from misunderstanding to catastrophe to total cinematic armageddon. Chad and Linda try to blackmail Cox. Pfarrer strikes up a relationship with Linda through an online dating service. Linda and Chad try to sell their secrets to the Russian embassy, represented by the cigarette-smoking "Mr. Krapkin." Cox moves into a houseboat and plots revenge against his philandering wife. And two CIA spooks (J. Jonah Jameson and another guy, whose name I promise to look up) wonder what the holy hell is happening.
Some might say "Burn" is just a pale retread of past Coen classics. True, it does feel a little like it was put together with pieces off the cutting room floor. Linda seems like a somewhat dimmer version of Fargo's Marge Gunderson. Harry probably would've been more at home in The Big Lebowski. And Oz is menacing enough to crawled right out of Miller's Crossing.
But so what? The pieces are pretty good, and the final result is excellent. Not the Coen Brothers' best, by any means, but certainly in the top tier. You could do a whole lot worse in a movie theater than "Burn After Reading." Just ask Paul Reubens.*
*Sorry, bad taste.
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