2008, USA
Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Drama
Having previously made films concerning the cyclic downfall of the human race and repeatedly examining the darkness of our fibers, the Coen Brothers are not ones to shy from a good morality tale. Though advertised as a madcap romp, Burn after Reading thinly masks the mess that is American politics.
The brothers' usual quick wit is so evenly paced that the film's early scenes drag due to the expectation of a quick-tongued comedy. Tenuous relationships reveal that everyone is sleeping with everyone else. The lowdown: CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is demoted at work and at home, as his unhappy health care wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) sleeps with treasury agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) who is wooing Hardbodies gym worker Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) who is trying to extort money for her plastic surgery dreams using Osborne's misplaced memoirs.
Strange bedfellows are not so strange in Washington, D.C., where confidential knowledge is a second away from full disclosure or absolute cover-up. With literal skeletons in closets and messengers getting shot, the probability of ruin awaits around every corner. Paranoia envelops like a fog over egos who know no shame, but in this spy-versus-spy world the suspicion is somewhat warranted.
When Linda's dimwitted coworker Chad (Brad Pitt) finds Osborne's memoirs, those the least in the know begin to call the shots. When their first attempt at blackmail fails, they go straight to the Russians. Their definition of allies and enemies is outdated, and in this game the rules are shoot first, look for logic later.
Joel and Ethan Coen do not mince words, and sometimes the dialogue can hit the audience over the head as they make it very clear that this satire is anything but mindless. When reflecting on the early glory days of his service, Osborne notes that the government is now all bureaucracy and no mission. A divorce lawyer counsels Katie that to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Linda repeatedly states that her desperate measures are justified through her need to reinvent herself, consequences be damned. These are not basic tools of exposition but rather wrecking balls for the next generation of government.
Despite this analysis of these unstately state affairs, the Coens' trademark quirky humor is still intact -- to be taken with a barrel of salt. The secrets are absurd and the characters act brashly, but not so much more than what occurs in the daily news. Dirt is swept under the rug or allowed to self-destruct after the subjects do a horrendous job of containing their situations. A children's book (Point of Order, Oliver) is mentioned in which a Sergeant at Arms falls asleep allowing for a cat to create chaos during a filibuster, reminding us that though cats have nine lives, government agents only have one.