Now that they have properly bounced back from a past string of timid failures with last year’s Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers return with their latest, Burn After Reading, to one of their favorite subjects: comically dimwitted screw-ups with deadly possibilities. When they know what they are doing and keep their smirks and winks in check enough to properly and sincerely define their characters, the duo can really milk uproarious laughs out of perpetual idiocy. Using the characters’ idiocy, they also take their trademark gleeful potshots at a genre, this time the espionage thriller.
The movie, after the opening credits that display the common genre trademark of digital readouts with the requisite sound effects, begins with John Malkovich as Osborne Cox, an alcoholic CIA operative, being informed that he's being demoted by his boss (I certainly would hate to be the man having to demote or fire John Malkovich). He in turn decides to retire early to write his own memoir, much to the chagrin of his icily witchy wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton). She, on the other hand, has been thinking of leaving him anyway as she has been having an affair with federal marshal Henry Pfarrer (George Clooney).
For an ex-CIA agent, Osborne is, like most every other character in the movie, too dim to detect that his wife is cheating on him while Katie does not realize that the already married Pfarrer can never really be faithful to anyone. But what really sets off Osborne and the main plot are two exercise trainers, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt). The latter has apparently found the CD that contains Osborne’s work thus far on his memoir, and he and Linda figure they could try to get money from Osborne in exchange for the CD in order to pay for Linda’s plastic surgery. Osborne, of course, can hardly take this kind of blackmail that Chad flippantly describes as “being a good Samaritan” until he ends up landing a punch at him and Chad and Linda decide to seek other unwise (really, moronic) ways to use the CD, including getting even the Russians involved.
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