Burn After Reading

The Coen Brothers wrote the screenplay of Burn After Reading while working on the screenplay of their award-winning No Country For Old Men. That they could alternate between the two, vastly different films is a testament to what the brothers are capable of, and they almost pull it off here again. Burn After Reading is a comedy that makes fun of almost everything, reminding you that almost none of it is laughing matter.

Consider the Cast

• A CIA expert on the Balkans, Osborne Cox (Malkovich), shunted out of the Agency as “he has a drinking problem”. He immediately decides to write a tell-all memoir, which lies thrown about the house, and then can’t rouse himself beyond the first few lines.

• His obviously successful and no-nonsense paediatrician wife, Katie (Swinton). She is used to getting her own way, whether it is with unsuspecting children or suspicious adults.

• Her lover Harry (Clooney), a federal marshal who carries a gun that he has never fired, which helps him a long way with the ladies. He is not bright enough to let discretion come in the way of his dalliances, but dollops of charm ensure that others overlook it and he never sees it.

• Harry’s writer wife Sandy, charming but not as gullible as we presume.

• One of Harry’s conquests, Linda (McDormand), who works at a gym and who has decided she won’t stop at anything — including walking into the Russian Embassy— for four cosmetic surgeries that will give her a new body and a new life.

• Linda’s good friend Chad (Pitt), he with the blond hair, flat abs and happy composition that comes with not exercising your mind too much.

Into this mix is thrown in a CD from Cox purportedly containing some top-secret stuff, or at least Chad and Linda surmise so given the list of “signals, names, numbers, figures”. The CD was left on the gym floor where Linda and Chad work, and they decide to exchange the information for money.

However, Cox, who considers himself a man of principles, over and above the post-Cold War generation, won’t be blackmailed by “this entire league of morons”. The consequences are grave for everyone, with the last person standing the unlikeliest of the lot. As the mess piles up, CIA— which is predictably watching everything — ignores the bodies and resolves “not to repeat what happened here, if we figure out what happened here”.

Burn After Reading — the title taking off from one of the most basic instructions for a spy — is scary in what it implies for both intelligence and Intelligence. And what results it can have, starting with the most basic of relationships. The most well-informed people in the film are actually divorce lawyers, who have efficient spies trailing cheating partners.

However, for all that, Burn After Reading is strangely cold and distant, never going the whole hog on what it’s saying. When a film is trying to get you that involved and thinking, it should perhaps be itself thinking a wee bit less and doing a lot more.

The wonderful cast compensates though. While Clooney and McDormand are Coen regulars, it is Pitt who is surprisingly good as the brainless, cheerful physical instructor. And then there are Malkovich and Swinton. Burn after reading? As a disgruntled ex-CIA and his angry wife, they scorch their way through.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com