REVIEW: Burn After Reading
John Malkovich on the dock, in a robe, with a hatchet
by Patrick McKeown l Contributor
Issue date: 9/17/08 Section: Opinion
Despite being made by the Coen Brothers I still had my doubts about their newest comedic effort, Burn After Reading. "But No Country For Old Men was so good", you might be thinking, "how could anyone doubt that their follow up would be amazing?" My answer: Intolerable Cruelty.
Intolerable Cruelty (2003) lived up to its name by putting the audience through an unwatchable film which showed George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones trying desperately to be a viable comedy team which ends in tragedy.
Based on their other comedies, the outcome of Cruelty was not thought possible of the fraternal wonder. As they have done with most of their comedies, they interlace the darkness of a film noir with the hilarity of screwball comedy. Sometimes, as in the case of Intolerable Cruelty, the humor gets lost and I fall asleep.
In Burn, the humor is present the whole way through, presenting the audience with a spy thriller tied between the lines of a complex love pentagon. As the reader might be asking themselves how a love pentagon is possible, I shall demonstrate.
John Malkovich plays a high ranking CIA agent named Osborne Cox who is being lowered in level due to rather unclear circumstances, leaving Cox in a hurricane of f-bombs equal to that of Glengarry Glen Ross. After he is accused of being an alcoholic, we cut to his Georgetown home where he proceeds to make himself a drink. His wife, the stone cold bitch Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton), jaunts in with a face and an English accent which brings to mind a Mommy Dearest type perpetually chewing a lemon.
She has a secret lover, played by George Clooney, an arrogant gun-toting treasury official. He, a bit paranoid to start with, becomes convinced that Osborne knows what is going on and will put an end to it.
Meanwhile in a gym not too far away, a gym employee finds a disk containing Osborne's memoir (pronounced mim-wa), which was created by his wife to try to get his secrets before she divorces him to marry Clooney. Meanwhile, Clooney is dating on the side where he meets gym employee Frances McDormand. From there, the paths of these characters collide in a manner which leaves almost every character dead.
Beyond this last detail, I feel obligated to omit the rest because then you wouldn't have to see it.
To look at this movie in relation with the others of the Coen's I think is also important. This movie ends the 'Idiot Trilogy', the collective name of three films starring George Clooney as 'the idiot'. They are, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, and Burn After Reading. It is also with these three films that the Coen's have sufficiently boiled the screwball comedy formula down to fit a modern apparatus.
Note: The screwball formula is boy+girl * happy ending. * represents the comedy gold that happens in between involving slapstick, death, etc. Without their forebears the Coens would have a much harder road to travel.
So I will leave you with this: if Burn After Reading were to play out as a game of Clue then this would be the best part of the movie: John Malkovich in a robe, in Georgetown, with a hatchet. Need I say more?
Intolerable Cruelty (2003) lived up to its name by putting the audience through an unwatchable film which showed George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones trying desperately to be a viable comedy team which ends in tragedy.
Based on their other comedies, the outcome of Cruelty was not thought possible of the fraternal wonder. As they have done with most of their comedies, they interlace the darkness of a film noir with the hilarity of screwball comedy. Sometimes, as in the case of Intolerable Cruelty, the humor gets lost and I fall asleep.
In Burn, the humor is present the whole way through, presenting the audience with a spy thriller tied between the lines of a complex love pentagon. As the reader might be asking themselves how a love pentagon is possible, I shall demonstrate.
John Malkovich plays a high ranking CIA agent named Osborne Cox who is being lowered in level due to rather unclear circumstances, leaving Cox in a hurricane of f-bombs equal to that of Glengarry Glen Ross. After he is accused of being an alcoholic, we cut to his Georgetown home where he proceeds to make himself a drink. His wife, the stone cold bitch Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton), jaunts in with a face and an English accent which brings to mind a Mommy Dearest type perpetually chewing a lemon.
She has a secret lover, played by George Clooney, an arrogant gun-toting treasury official. He, a bit paranoid to start with, becomes convinced that Osborne knows what is going on and will put an end to it.
Meanwhile in a gym not too far away, a gym employee finds a disk containing Osborne's memoir (pronounced mim-wa), which was created by his wife to try to get his secrets before she divorces him to marry Clooney. Meanwhile, Clooney is dating on the side where he meets gym employee Frances McDormand. From there, the paths of these characters collide in a manner which leaves almost every character dead.
Beyond this last detail, I feel obligated to omit the rest because then you wouldn't have to see it.
To look at this movie in relation with the others of the Coen's I think is also important. This movie ends the 'Idiot Trilogy', the collective name of three films starring George Clooney as 'the idiot'. They are, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, and Burn After Reading. It is also with these three films that the Coen's have sufficiently boiled the screwball comedy formula down to fit a modern apparatus.
Note: The screwball formula is boy+girl * happy ending. * represents the comedy gold that happens in between involving slapstick, death, etc. Without their forebears the Coens would have a much harder road to travel.
So I will leave you with this: if Burn After Reading were to play out as a game of Clue then this would be the best part of the movie: John Malkovich in a robe, in Georgetown, with a hatchet. Need I say more?
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movie buff
posted 9/20/08 @ 2:46 PM EST
Brad Pitt can be so funny, as long as he's not taking himself too seriously... in any case, it's about time someone made good use of his habitually spastic arm movements
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