Burn After Reading 2008

Another Coen brothers film, only for those with a rather warped sense of humour. Less comprehensible than The Big Lebowski, and with more confusion and awkwardness than Napoleon Dynamite. The Coen brothers seem to love making fun of people who profess to really know what they're doing, and who better to target than the CIA?

John Malkovich plays a CIA analyst who is fired from his work, and so fruitlessly spends his time writing his memoirs. The plot is deliberately complicated, so here goes. His wife, played by Tilda Swinton (famous frosty in Michael Clayton) is having an affair with a neighbour, played by George Clooney. She contemplates divorce, and so tries to steal all of her husband's financial information, and gets the memoirs along with it. She then leaves it in a gym, where Linda Litzke works with Brad Pitt.

Where the film really sparkles in the stupidity of the characters. Brad Pitt is a stupid sports-trainer with a headband constantly laughing inanely and gluggling sports drinks. Clooney is a narrow-minded clown, speaking over his wife at dinner parties and spraying everyone with the food in his mouth at the same time, before coming down with a rash. What the Coen brothers do so well are those films where nobody has any real clue what's going on. Pitt finds Malkovich's memoirs, and rings him up late at night "Osbourne Cox.." "YES THIS IS OSBOURNE COX" "We have...er... your shit..." "What?" "Your highly sensinitive government shit, and we want a good samaritan reward..." "YOU FUCKING MORON! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING".

To describe the plot would ruin the intended confusion of the film, and I'll leave you to enjoy it. What does happen, though, is Malkovich gets increasingly agitated by these idiots pestering him (who eventually go to the Russian embassy!), with a particularly memorable line "No, you are a moron. You are in league with a moron. You are part of a league of morons", he says as brandishing a gun in the top picture.

As relief from all this madness, there are two scenes where the CIA try to work out what's happening, where J.K.Simmons (better known as the editor from Spiderman) has some hilariously awkward lines. "Erm... so report back to me... when.. it...er...makes sense". At the end of the film, they manage to work out what's happened, and of course the chaos doesn't stop till the last minute. Sitting in his office with his junior, the CIA boss says "well, what have we learned? We've learned not to do it again. What it is we did I'm damned if I know".

A complicated film definitely, but remember that it is a comedy, and the confusion is all part of it. Brilliant acting from Pitt and Clooney, and especially Malkovich, who all knock around angrily, but their struggling just gets them deeper into the hilarious mess they're all in. ★★★★★