Burn After Reading Review

Click to enlargeAt last! My local is finally showing something fucking decent. After spending the last couple of weeks side-stepping the current shit at the flicks and instead working on increasing the arse-print on my sofa whilst gaming myself into early retardation, I left the house. Initially, akin to Gizmo in bright light, I ran Gremlin-like for the nearest shade on my way to the cinema. Luckily, I didn’t have to stumble too far and I was, once more, in the darkness. Having seen and fucking loved No Country For Old Men I was looking forward to Ethan and Joel Coen’s follow-up, Burn After Reading. The trailer fucking rocked hard, I thought the festering pustules of the past (The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty) could be well and truly forgotten.

A disk containing the memoirs of ex-CIA agent, Osbourne Cox (Malkovich), finds its way into the hands of two gym employees, Linda a lovelorn internet-dating hopeful (McDormand) and Chad, a meat-headed fitness freak (Pitt). Together they attempt to blackmail Osbourne in an effort to finance Linda’s cosmetic surgery. Meanwhile, sex-crazed Harry Pfarrer (Clooney), who is diddling Osbourne’s missus, finds himself unwittingly embroiled in the “espionage”.

Now, it’s been a few hours since I saw Burn After Reading and to its credit, I’m still thinking about it. There were solid performances through-out (George Clooney in particular is awesome), the scenes with the “real” intelligence officers are fucking hilarious and it is an extremely well crafted piece of cinema. Problem is, I can’t really work out what film this is supposed to be. It’s funny and there’s some genuine tension, but it’s not quite a thriller and it isn’t funny enough to be considered a comedy. Like The Big Lebowski and Fargo, Burn After Reading is ambiguous in it’s story-telling but is nowhere near as accessible as the aforementioned. The overt madness makes this a very difficult film to watch. The plot is meticulously detailed - it’s the ultimate slow-burner, you only really feel this film’s impact come the final frame. If you persevere and make the effort to get to the end you’ll be rewarded, but there’s no guarantee.

Maybe I was expecting too much. The trailer was awesome, some of the other reviews I’d read were glowing to say the least - however, I just don’t feel the love, and it occurred to me - there’s so much kudos for Coen Brother’s films that other critics obviously find it difficult to pass accurate critical judgement upon their films. Well, shit-wipes, I don’t have any such problems! They are the golden boys of American contemporary cinema, they have made movies that have defined not only me but my generation, but they have made bad films (see above). While Burn After Reading isn’t by any stretch of the imagination bad, it isn’t what I’d come to expect.

Now, I don’t want to seem spineless but I’m going to give myself an escape route so fuck you, you judgemental pricks! For true Coen fans, there’s enough here to get all warm and runny over and being that it is the Coen Brothers and that I am a true fan, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt. There’s every possibility that in two weeks time I’ll get it, suddenly laugh out loud and all the other people on the tube will stare at me like I’ve just pissed in their open mouths. But, if you’re anything like me (a funny looking computer freak with an unhealthy obsession over Natalie Portman covered in Marmite) you may have to see this film a few times to appreciate its anarchic precision.

The best bits were in the trailer out of 5.

Comments

[Gonzo]

This is on my gonna have to watch list too.