Review: Burn After Reading
You know, I don't know what it is about the Coens. Every time they release another movie critics hail it as an incredible work of art (usually), but they're really very hit and miss with me. The Big Lebowski is awesome all around, O Brother Where Art Thou was hilarious, and The Ladykillers totally deserves to exist. However, the other things I've watched by them include Fargo (which was borderline unwatchable for most of the run time and featured the least interesting bit of police work leading to a capture ever- oh, that's the killer's car parked right there, how about we go see what's up?), No Country for Old Men (minus the ridiculous amount of hype surrounding it, what you're left with is a pretty standard, slow as hell Western heist and one good actor), and now this, none of which managed to rate more than mild interest shifting to extreme boredom. Maybe it's me.
Quick rundown: ostensibly Burn After Reading is a spoof on spy-thrillers. A CIA agent (John Malkovich) gets fired from his job (for drinking), and decides to write his memoirs in order to make some money- but the disc gets lost at a gym and picked up by some unscrupulous gym employees, who attempt to ransom it off for cash, and then, when that doesn't work, sell it to the Russians. Meanwhile, there is George Clooney's character. I don't refer to him by his role because he doesn't really have one- it's never clear who he works for, the Marshals or the Treasury, and it's basically irrelevant anyway because all he does is nail all the female characters and shoot somebody. I actually had to go look it up because I didn't remember what he was (and keep in mind I watched this less than a week ago), and it turns out no one else really knows either.
In the fashion of the genre, there's the typical convoluted plot (although it's really not hard to follow if you're paying any kind of attention) and back-and-forth between various elements in the government. But whatever, I'm done talking about the plot because I don't care anymore. Let's just get right to impressions overall, shall we? After I'd been watching it for about 20 minutes, I began to think "am I in the right movie? This was supposed to be a comedy, right?" I thought this because I had laughed all of once up to that point. Same with the rest of the audience, and it was a pretty full house- I actually had to sit in the 3rd row. It turns out that all the funny moments of this movie are in the trailer. Hell, they're all in the teaser. Further thoughts: George Clooney's character is basically worthless. He could have been removed from the movie entirely and I wouldn't have noticed or regretted his departure. He has no emotional depth whatsoever- he just runs around mugging, banging all the women (as previously mentioned), and doing incredibly random things like shooting one of the other characters and building some weird dildo-chair in his basement. Malkovich's character is kind of amusing, but not onstage any significant amount of time. One of the gym employees (the one that isn't Brad Pitt) would be compelling if she had an actual reason for wanting to blackmail Malkovich, but it's just because she wants some money to pay for a bunch of unnecessary plastic surgeries. I suppose you can think of these various plot elements as either wacky and funny or stupid, and I definitely fall into the latter category. The only truly funny and standout performance comes from Pitt, and it's not exactly hard to stand out from these performances. Plus [oh look, a spoiler] he dies about 2/3 of the way through the movie anyway.
I'd find it difficult to recommend watching this in any context- maybe if it showed up on TNT late one night and there's nothing else on. I definitely wouldn't pay for it, and I'm not even sure I'd be able to comply if someone else rented it and asked me to watch it with them. Ignore at your leisure.
Next movie- probably Choke. Then Quarantine. Here's hoping they can do better.