Movie Review - "Burn After Reading"

Joel and Ethan Coen, the writer-directors of "Burn After Reading," seem to have a formula for how they make movies.  Almost every time they put out a dark, serious-minded film, they tend to follow it up with a more quirky, lightheaded one.  For example, their Oscar-nominated "Fargo" was followed by the now-classic stoner comedy "The Big Lebowski."  Now, after winning multiple Academy Awards for their last film, "No Country For Old Men," they've returned with this off-the-wall exercise in goofball insanity.

The film stars a number of major Hollywood stars, including Brad Pitt ("Fight Club"), Francis McDormand ("Fargo"), George Clooney ("Ocean's 11"), John Malkovich ("Being John Malkovich"), and Tilda Swinton ("Michael Clayton").  The plot of the film is all over the place, but it involves a disgraced FBI agent named Osbourne Cox (Malkovich), who decides to write his memiors as a tell-all book that will (in his eyes, anyway), blow the doors open on everything.  Meanwhile, his wife (Swinton) is secretly planning to divorce him (in the meantime she's sleeping with another government employee, played by Clooney).  A disc containing her divorce information is accidently left at a local gym, where it is found by two of its employees (Pitt and McDormand).  Mistakingly assuming it to be secret undercover information, the duo end up deciding to use it to blackmail Cox.

I've just described about 15% of the entire story; this movie is filled with more twist and turns than a roller-coaster (Russians, plastic surgery, sex addiction, murder, and online dating all figure into the story as well).  But, like "The Big Lebowski," the plot is kind of a moot point.  The pleasures of this movie come from the performances.  All of the actors give excellent performances (special props go to Pitt, who sheds his Movie-Star quality and plays his character as if he just walked out of a cartoon).  The movie stars a little slow but gets really funny as it goes on.  But the movie also gets really confusing, and the ending is, well... not really much of an ending.  However, this is still a very funny and engaging movie that is definitely worth seeing.

"Burn After Reading" gets a 3 out 5.