The Coen brothers pulled a deep and luscious film out of their pocket last year with No Country For Old Men. Eschewing their usual flavor of folksy, odd characters and detached amusement, that film was a Big Deal. With Burn After Reading, on the surface, the Coens have returned to their capriciously intellectual and dark love letters to kooky characters and interesting situations (see: their filmography). However, Burn After Reading leans heavily on kooky and dark and swerves largely away from cogent or amusing. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I say on the surface, because the film was marketed like a wacky comedy, but until a very precise moment in Act III, the film seems to lack any comedy but that of bemused detachment.
My companion and I were hooked by the story, engaged with the characters, and interested in the outcome — but we both agreed that the movie only really become funny and alive just as it was ending. Oh certainly, there were moments. Any movie with the underestimated, underused Richard Jenkins and J.K. Simmons is going to have moments, even without Frances McDormand, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt. John Malkovitch strolls into his first scene already drooling for the meal to follow and chomps the scenery such that Nathan Lane would look like a wallflower. Moments are legion.
The events that tie our principals together are implausible but work together to create a really super story — but it spends so much time building to a head that we can’t enjoy it when it gets there. The clash of worlds between that of Malkovitch and Pitt, the clash of ideas and behaviors amongst everyone — these make for great building moments. It was almost as if the Coens took a page from Clooney’s playbook (instead of he from theirs as is traditional) and wanted to make a grand gallery of facts and faces which would explode in a terrific, brief ending. Watching the hapless gym rats struggle in a world beyond their ken was pleasurable, if commonplace. Enjoying the wrong-footedness of the governmental response to the events of the narrative was not new, but it was fresh.
Carter Burwell assembled a portentious score from all his previous Coen brothers movie scores — it was unintentionally amusing but the music is perfect for their style. Clooney also assembled a charming lothario from all his previous George Clooney characters, which was also unintentionally amusing and perfect, what can you do? Just embrace it.
I am definitely glad I saw it, but I still can’t really say what it is that I saw. It’s like a spy thriller, but with no spies and no thrills. However, I would see it again just to watch Jenkins and Simmons nibble their too-few frames of film with restraint and hilarity.
MPAA Rating R- pervasive language, some sexual content and violence.
Release date 9/12/08
Time in minutes 96
Director Joel and Ethan Coen
Studio Focus Features