Burn After Reading

I finally caught up with this film after a fair amount of procrastination. It seems fairly wrong to be posting a movie review with the election going on and everything, but I needed a break in between homework and BBC News. (Speaking of the former – what kind of idiot teachers assign lengthy assignments on such an important day? Common sense, people. Nobody’s going to be working on that research paper when they can instead be watching hot female news anchors and CNN holograms.)

Anyway, I really liked the Coens’ No Country for Old Men, but I also thought it was way overhyped and not nearly their greatest film. It also wasn’t better than There Will Be Blood, which I probably would have voted as Best Picture if I really cared about popularity contests like the Oscars. But I guess I kinda do since I watch them every year. Do you think Heath Ledger will win for The Joker?!

Burn After Reading is not another so-called “masterpiece.” It’s got some moments of very dark humour, just like No Country, but it’s not as serious as the other film. That caused some reviewers to give it negative marks for “inconsistency.” People said the same thing about The Big Lebowski when it first came out. Dark silly humour and realistic violence are staples of the Coens, from Blood Simple to Fargo, so that didn’t bother me very much. What bothered me is the film not giving Brad Pitt enough screen time, because every scene he’s in is totally stolen.

Brad Pitt secures some shit

He’s been cruising through films lately playing variations of his cool, Fight Club/Ocean’s 11 persona, where he basically looks smug and says cool one-liners and looks bad-ass. Then last year he opened up a bit with The Assassination of Jesse James, and now he’s flexing his comedy muscles again, and I’m really hoping he does more films like this. His character, Chad, is by far the highlight of the film. George Clooney tries – admirably, I might add – to do a similar thing with his character, Harry, by making him talk really fast and giving him little verbal and facial tics, but Clooney’s act seems somewhat more calculated and Clooneyish than Pitt’s. We’ve seen Clooney do this before in other Coen movies so it’s not as endearing as watching Brad Pitt emphatically say, “Shit, yeah!” when he’s asked by Frances McDormand whether her date is wearing an expensive designer suit (doesn’t even sound as funny out of context as it is within the film). You can literally see his character’s absent brain cells as he runs along on a treadmill, waving his arms in the air, listening to his iPod. The “security of your shit” telephone call is also one of the funniest things I’ve seen in forever.

The rest of the cast is all capable and fun but nothing quite lives up to Pitt’s slapstick. That’s why it’s an awful shame when, without ruining anything, he disappears halfway through the movie. But, for what it’s worth, the plot also kicks into high gear at this point and the movie begins to feel like it’s moving along a lot faster.

Oscar-winner? Best Coen Brothers comedy since Fargo? Nah. Entertaining? Fun? Yep. Definitely not as bad or boring as some reviewers would have had you believe; if the idea of Brad Pitt camping it up and John Malkovich running around in a robe, wearing slippers and wielding a hammer sounds appealing to you – you’ll probably get a kick out of the film.