Wesley's Burn After Reading Review

After their brutal, pessimistic and incredibly well-crafted adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, directors Joel and Ethan Coen take a well deserved breather and deliver one of the silliest, over-the-top, vulgar and hilarious films I’ve seen in quite awhile with Burn After Reading. The few people that were introduced to the brother directing team via their Oscar winning effort of No Country of Old Men will probably be sorely disappointed with this film. It’s nonsensical at times, idiosyncratic, bumbling, slapstick and more in the vein of previous Coen efforts such as The Big Lebowski and Fargo. However, just as one begins to get comfortable with ungainly characters and bizarre situations, the Coen Brothers blind side the audience with tension, suspense and incredibly graphic violence reminiscent of their previous Oscar winning film. In other words, this film is a guaranteed good time.

Well, the film is a guaranteed good time if you know how to watch movies or what you are in for. I swear, every trip to the theater seems to bring out something else that I dislike about mankind and their inability to watch a film properly. However, this particular film viewing experience was particularly disturbing as it was not the usual perpetrators of teenagers that were causing my friends and I a distraction- it was adults ranging from the ages of 30-50 years old. Sitting in front of these people would honestly make you believe that they had never seen a movie before in their lives. After something happened, they would literally give a play-by-play of the event verbally. It blew my mind. I can’t believe how many times I heard the phrase, “Aww… God, bless his heart. He loves her.” It was probably about fifteen times. Secondly, every time something remotely violent happened they reacted as if it was the end of the world. They actually began screaming curse words out to the screen and even kicked the back of my chair. They may have been 30 to 50 years old but I swear they had less maturity and theater etiquette than most of the teenage punks I encounter on my theater visits.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that, if you were potty trained at birth and were taught how to keep food in your mouth while chewing, you should be fine while taking this film in.

Now, back to the quality of the film at hand. 

Burn After Reading deals with interconnecting stories between a vast amount of quirky characters from a recently fired CIA officer to his cold, cheating wife to small time gym employees to an exercise-obsessed womanizer to many more. When a disc of Osborne Cox’s (John Malkovich) memoirs of working at the CIA land in the hands of dim witted personal trainer Chad (Brad Pitt) and insecure gym employee Linda (Frances McDormand), they decide to be “good Samaritans” and black mail the former CIA officer for cash. Soon, everyone from spies for divorce lawyers to the CIA themselves become involved and bodies start to pile up.

The strongest appeal of Burning After Reading lies in the quirky characters that Joel and Ethan Coen have created and the amazingly talented cast that inhabits them. With a cast full of people such as Brad Pitt, George Clooney, John Malkovich, Tilda Swindon, Frances McDormand, and J.K. Simmons, you should know that you are getting something special. Each cast member gives a unique performance that is strong in its own way but Brad Pitt completely steals the show as moron personal trainer Chad. His hyper active and somewhat child-like persona is incredibly fun to watch and seemed to engage the audience every time he came on screen. Pitt particularly stood out in the phone call scene to Malkovich’s character and during his first contact with that character. I really just loved everything about his character, from the absurd highlights in his hair to the iPod that he had attached to his bicep. It was just such an entertaining character to watch deal with such a serious (and dangerous) situation.

The Coen Brothers themselves are another big appeal of the film. Fresh off their Oscar winning run with No Country for Old Men, the brothers change up their seemingly meditative style from that film to one of more flair and energy (something that matches this film quite well). From the opening computer generated zoom-in to the CIA building in Washington, D.C. from space, one can already tell how vastly different the Coens’ approach will be in this film as compared to their last effort. Their direction is incredibly slick, well framed, and very expertly and comically timed. They are able make scenes with their shambling characters awkward and funny in one moment while making another scene incredible tense and nerve-racking at the drop of a hat (especially the closet scene). Through these ranges, they are able to make an insane film that is just amazingly fun to watch unfold.

Despite that fact that it is a very well made film with very talented people behind it, Burn After Reading is not a film for everyone. If you are not familiar to the Coens’ sense of strange, odd-ball, crude, and often violent sense of humor, then you will probably not be into this film. The mixture of graphic violence with their peculiar comedy seemed to turn off and downright confuse a lot of people in the audience while the rest of us who were in on the joke got a kick out of what the Coens were trying to do. It is also important to note that Burn After Reading is not the Coens' best film. While it is very funny and crafted, it does take a while to really get going (though the opening scene in the CIA office is hilariously brilliant) and, despite being only 96 minutes, feels a little long towards the end. Don’t get me wrong- I loved the movie and honestly thought it put films like Tropic Thunder to shame in the humor department but, after some thought, it doesn’t really hold a candle to some of the Coens' previous efforts such as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, etc. However, if you’re into the Coen Brothers and comedies with bizarre characters, over-the-top insanity, and a lot of vulgarity, then Burn After Reading should be a fun time for you.

7/10