Review in a Hurry: A twisted spy farce populated with characters that might as well be windup toys, Burn After Reading is nevertheless a hoot—mostly thanks to the all-star cast.
The Bigger Picture: After the gravitas of the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers probably needed to lighten up a little. Hence Burn After Reading, a caper flick that's like a Hitchcock movie on laughing gas. A recently fired CIA agent (John Malkovich, ever the put-upon snob) finds himself blackmailed by two enthusiastic but ill-prepared fitness instructors (Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand) who've stumbled across his private documents; meanwhile, Malkovich's wife (Tilda Swinton) dabbles with a philandering law-enforcement type (oh, hey, George Clooney!), and well, naturally things get complicated. And since this is a Coen Brothers film, they also get bloody.
Despite the darkly madcap antics on display—nearly everyone in the film is working a scam of some sort—Burn After Reading isn't particularly audacious. What it is is a welcome return to form after such throwaways as The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty. Some of that's down to the frenzied pace and pinballing story, but the credit's really due to the infectious energy of the cast. Neither Clooney nor Pitt has put this much into a role in years; here they gamely assay their second-banana roles with glee.
If there's a knock on Burn After Reading, it's that it's not really about anything; it's a shaggy-dog story of the first order, a collection of idiots all reaching for a brass ring that the audience knows doesn't really exist. So the dramatic irony is a little thick; fortunately, all the Coens need to do to clear the air is light a match.
The 180—a Second Opinion: It's all so over-the-top that you might want a nap halfway through. Of course, by then you'd have forgotten what was going on. Thankfully, there's a Greek chorus of sorts in the form of a couple of CIA executives (David Rasche and J.K. Simmons) who show up now and again to explain things.