BURN AFTER READING (2008) - ***1/2

Remember ten years ago how after getting major Oscar nominations for FARGO, the critics either hated or simply dismissed THE BIG LEBOWSKI? Yeah now everyone and their mothers claim to love that one, but it got trashed in theatres like The Dude's carpet. Now I'm not accusing some of you of lying about always being there for it from the beginning, but my fuzzy math calculations here just don't add up.

Well fast forward to now, and while the reviews in general seem to be overall positive, you still have a few folks using some rather silly logic in deriding BURN AFTER READING. There are those who whine about how the Coen Brothers have strayed from the "serious drama" path of last year's NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, or how READING isn't dramatic enough, or whatever the hell. I guess if you win an Oscar, people have their bitch-sniper laser-sights on you and will execute over the most trivial stuff. And you thought Dubya could be trigger happy. Then again, maybe some of them are disgruntled Oscar poolers who were foolish enough to bet some hard cash early on BURN as an awards contender, I just don't know.

Speaking for the majority, I hate to break it to some of you, but BURN AFTER READING is a typical Coen Brothers effort. I mean for John Ford, it was cowboys. For Kurosawa, it was samurai. For Scorsese, mobsters, and so forth. With Joel and Ethan Coen, this is once again about foolish misfits being involved in something, usually a criminal enterprise, completely way over their heads, and for a few of them, they are absolutely screwed.

So for the very complicated plot, if you want to argue that there was one, is that John Malkovich, not seen by my eyes since the cinematic war crime ERAGON, is a CIA agent who gets demoted because he's an alcoholic. He gives us a great Coen-esque line to his Mormon co-worker ("Compared to you, everyone has a drinking problem!") and promptly quits to write his memoirs. His wife in Tilda Swinton plans to divorce him, so he transfers all his computer files onto a disc, which promptly is dropped at a gym by the law firm secretary, and found by fitness trainers Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand. That shallow numbskull champion tag team try to blackmail Malkovich, which I would think would be a mistake but that's only because I've seen IN THE LINE OF FIRE. Meanwhile, McDormand is internet dating Treasury agent Clooney, who himself is also banging Swinton on the side. Why he's having an affair with his enemy from MICHAEL CLAYTON who tried to carbomb him, I have no idea. I do know that their make-up sex must have been awesome.

Still with me?

As I expected, the cast was terrific and everyone has the right timing and chemistry with each other, from poor Malkovich as the Ivy League professional with a mediocre career duller than dishwater to McDormand as the sweet but purely unpractical walking mid-life crisis, everyone seems to have genuine fun with their parts. Swinton is pretty good as the authoratative stern bitch, which makes a scene revealing her profession even more hilarious, but I fear she may unfortunately get herself typecasted by Hollywood into more such roles, especially since she won an Oscar for acting such a similar character in MICHAEL CLAYTON. Still, something subtly sexy about her wearing a jewel necklace while nude in the bed with Clooney.

Clooney is of course terrific, as the charming manwhore, to which he's so good at one, I wonder if he at times is pretty much playing his tabloid reputation. I know he's good buddies with the Coens and all, but with him flirting with McDormand in front of the camera, I wonder if her husband in Joel didn't keep a gun around just in case. I mean you gotta defend your territory sometimes, even from a friendly veteran explorer of the female body like Batman.

Anyway, the word on the Internet is right, Brad Pitt does steal the movie. I've whined before of how Pitt can be a great actor when he wasn't coasting with disinterest like in SPY GAME or THE MEXICAN and so on, as if he is still trying to beat out Will Smith in taking over the fallen Tom Cruise's throne as King-Star of Hollywood. But here he's special as that guy we all know, the best friend you could ever have, but you wouldn't want to trust your life in his hands. When he meets Malkovich, I thought it was strange. Consider that Pitt once was the legendary badass Tyler Durden, he tries as this clueless dipshit to act tough here by trying to mimic Clint Eastwood as if he saw a DIRTY HARRY movie the night before, and I laugh as he tremendously fails.

Hey Brad, I forgive you finally for MR. & MRS. SMITH. I still have MEET JOE BLACK as a strike on my books, but you're doing fine so far so don't worry about. Keep up the good work mate, don't let those Paparazzi assholes get you down. Who knows, if he had just a few more sequences, he could have been a serious candidate for a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Oh well, someone else will get the lucky honor of losing to Heath Ledger.

But I must give mention to Richard Jenkins. Seemingly the only major player of this farce to not get top-billing on the memorable retro-fluffy poster, he's probably the only sane logical realistic person stuck in this mess over the MacGuffin disc. Yeah some will say that he didn't have as much material to work with as the others, but he deserves some worthy attention, of which I've found lacking so far.

I believe it was filmmaker William Friedkin on his commentary track for TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. who complained about redundancy in movies in terms of excessive coverage of the plot. What that means is, take for example when in READING, Pitt explains to McDormand how he found out Malkovich's identity because of some throwaway dialogue junk of knowing a computer hacker. Every other picture would have some useless scene, usually in action cinema, showing us this encounter, but the Coens don't bother, and Thank God. I would apply this as well to the ending, which some have criticized as being too abrupt and anticlimatic. I argue instead that it's a perfect sterile and very calm bookend to a lively chaotic storyline.

I would also add how READING could be seen as commentary on how a brood get into so much trouble over something irrelevant, which in itself is an allegory for us invading Iraq over those WMDs, which disapeared magically this side of Amelia Earhart and the government then claimed overnight that we were there to spread freedom like butter and herpes, but I'm tired of pompous critics who randomly inject politics into their reviews so thankfully I dodged that bullet. Plus, notice how the sexes fare ultimately in BURN. The women here haven't gotten the better end of their male mates since they dragged them to watch that SEX AND THE CITY movie earlier this year.

All I'm trying to say is that BURN AFTER READING isn't as good as say other Coen comedies like THE BIG LEBOWSKI or RAISING ARIZONA or O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?, but its still an utterly satisfying popcorn package that is smarter, wittier, and more memorable exercise than most genre efforts we get these days. Oh and it's cool that unlike American horror, the Coens know how to weave superb gore into their narrative, and none of that CGI headshot goofyness. Unfortunately to a few, that's not enough itself considering they came off a contemporary classic masterpiece like NO COUNTRY.

Well fuck them and let me end this review by briefly talking about the audience at my screening. They hollered, they giggled, and totally dug the shit out of Pitt. They were horribly shocked in a good way when Clooney's device is revealed and in a bad way when the unexpected plot twist occurs. Unlike years ago with INTOLERABLE CRUELTY and THE LADYKILLERS, afterwards I felt a good buzz from the exiting crowd, and this may in fact probably end up as the #1 movie this weekend.