Review: Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading

***

Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton 

After the doom and gloom of No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers lighten up with a black comedy set in the world of spies and intrigue.

It all kicks off when John Malkovich's CIA analyst, outraged at being downsized, decides to get his own back by writing his memoirs.

When his tell-all falls into the hands of Brad Pitt's numbskull gym instructor, a bumbling blackmail plot is hatched that eventually embroils George Clooney's frazzled Fed and Tilda Swinton's adulterous ice-queen.   

Pitt is the stand-out here as a gum-chewing airhead with a crazy quiff, though Frances McDormand (aka Joel Coen's missus) is good, too, as his plastic surgery-obsessed partner-in-crime.

The strain of cramming so many oddballs into one story eventually starts to show, though, while a couple of gruesome deaths in the second half of the film seem violently at odds with the wackiness of the first.   

On the strength of this and their other two so-so collaborations (O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty), you leave wondering whether Clooney and the Coens are really bringing out the best in each other.

- Neil Smith