burn after reading

Yes, Burn After Reading is the latest Joel and Ethan Coen movie since they cleaned up at the Oscars with the epic No Country For Old Men.

If you go see it with this in mind, however, you will be very confused. Burn After Reading is instead in the tradition of the vaunted Coen comedies O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Fargo and The Big Lebowski, a sizzling farce that is gloriously unhinged and bizarre.

Burn After Reading chronicles the events that take place after the memoirs of a former CIA agent are accidentally obtained by two bumbling gym employees. But this doesn't even begin to happen until well into the movie. Really, the film serves as an opportunity for the Coens to create the most absurd, irreverent spy movie they can.

The cast, which includes Coen veterans George Clooney and Frances McDormand (Joel's wife), is superb. Every member attacks their imbecile characters with extreme relish and obvious fun. Brad Pitt and John Malkovich are both hilarious, Tilda Swinton plays Malkovich's wife with heartless acidity and J.K. Simmons and Richard Jenkins kill in their smaller roles. Jenkins, whose star has been on the rise recently with a string of great performances in The Visitor, Step Brothers and now this, perfectly inhabits the role of the gym manager who not-so-secretly yearns for the oblivious McDormand.

With these actors getting nearly all of the screen time, the film can't help but be enjoyable. Although not the most cohesive of the Coens' humor scripts, the jokes still hit with high frequency. Anyone who's seen The Ladykillers, however, will recognize the gratuitous use of the f-bomb, a device that is off-putting as often as it is funny.

The adept pacing makes up for some of the plot extravagances, and the rest are rendered plausible by painting the CIA as an omnipotent entity that allows the characters to do anything they want without realistic consequences. Although not perfect, and certainly not the Coens' best, Burn After Reading is an unconventional, enjoyable flick that more than deserves to be seen by anyone who appreciates a little quirk in their comedy.