The Coen Brothers are geniuses. There is no doubt about that. "Burn After Reading" is just another example of their brilliance. This another one of their movies where you're along for a great ride, only for nothing to end up happening. But you don't mind, that's part of their genius.
Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) was asked to leave the CIA and decides now is as good a time as any to start writing a book of his memoirs. His wife (Tilda Swinton, not looking like an enraged psychopath for once) is cheating on him with Harry (George Clooney) - a paranoid state office marshal, who has never drawn is gun in 20 years of service, he happily proclaims to anyone who will listen and also seems to make up allergies at whim - who is cheating on his own wife. Meanwhile Linda (Frances McDormand) works at a gym with Chad (Brad Pitt, who plays a complete idiot), and is looking to reinvent herself. She's single and looking on dating sites, but can't find the right man. She believes changing her appearance will turn everything around for her. Then the gym staff stumble upon a disc of Cox's memoirs (dropped by his wife in the locker room, who is looking to file for divorce, but needs that disc for leverage), leading them to try and blackmail him for the disc. It doesn't go well.
The plot is very intertwined. Linda ends up dating Harry. All of these stories start to mingle, and turns into a mess (not plot-wise, a mess for all of these characters). Pitt and Malkovich play off each other so well. Chad is a dumb ass. Cox is an angry egomaniac. Their interactions are priceless. Chad tries to act like a spy from all the movies he's seen, and Cox is just an angry, angry man. Linda just wants the money to pay for her surgery, and has no clue what kind of dangers she's putting her and Chad into by trying to get the money.
Like many of the comedies we've covered, this movie is not for everybody. If you enjoy the comedy styles of the Coen Brothers (like "The Big Lebowski" [Unfortunately we don't have] and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" [which we will get to]), you'll probably enjoy "Burn After Reading". It's a great spoof of the spy-thriller genre, while mixing in real life problems and even addressing class warfare in it's own subtle way. Check it out. Come for the laughs, stay for the charisma that is Brad Pitt being a moron, George Clooney being a paranoid womanizer, and Malkovich being . . . Malkovich. Also, watching Clooney put a bullet in Pitt's head is icing on the cake. And JK Simmons' hilarious scenes in which the entire movie gets summed up are worth the watch alone!
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