Movie review: Burn After Reading

You're not paranoid if they're really out to get you.

by John P. Meyer

Somewhat surprisingly given the high expectations, the Coen Brothers' latest film, Burn After Reading, actually lives up to its heavily-advertised hype. Even more surprisingly, this is thanks in no small part to the perfectly on-key, dryly humorous performances turned in by supporting players J.K. Simmons and David Rasche.

Simmons plays the unnamed CIA section chief who has the misfortune of being up the chain of command from a defrocked operative named Osborne Cox (played with deliciously over-the-top spitefulness by John Malkovich). Simmons' character knows Cox only from the reports being periodically presented to him by a field operative named Palmer (Mr. Rasche, delivering one potentially agency-compromising bit of bad news after another - invariably punctuated by a flurry of "um"s and "er"s). Those acquainted with Simmons' work on TNT's The Closer are aware of his facility for deadpan delivery, which he exercises here to delightful comic effect.

While Simmons and Rasche don't get a lot of screen time, their characters serve to seal the audience satisfaction deal in this off-the-wall, insightful screen outing that serves to re-establish Joel and Ethan's reputation for comedy after their intensely dramatic academy award winning effort from last year.

It doesn't hurt that the fabulous filmmaking brothers have selected for their lead players George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton, all of whom acquit themselves with distinction in challenging, against-type roles. (Did I mention John Malkovich?)

The chain of events that lead to the conversations in Simmons' office originates when Osborne is abruptly discharged from his post as SIGINT chief over the Belgrade section. Seems he has a drinking problem - or at least that's the way his superiors see it.

Turns out he also has a marital problem, in that he's hitched to a cast iron bitch named Katie (Ms. Swinton, broadcasting verbal vitriol with practiced ease). Katie doesn't like it that Osborne has "quit" his job and plans to write his memoirs for publication; in fact, she doesn't like much of anything, except bedding down with U.S. Treasury agent Harry Pfarrer (Mr. Clooney), who has developed a habit of going on a five-mile run whenever he chalks up another extramarital encounter. Harry gets in a lot of running.

Off on another lifestyle tangent, yet still within the Beltway, Linda Litzke (Ms. McDormand) works at a branch of the Hardbodies gym chain. She's mired in lonely middle age and concerned about her sagging upper arms, pooching midriff and what she considers to be her inadequate bustline. These perceptions take root as a result of her consultation with a plastic surgeon (Jeffrey DeMunn, whose character might have made a promising used car salesman were it not for the medical degree).

Working at the gym along with Linda are manager Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins, whose smallish role nevertheless proves pivotal to the plot) and Linda's best bud Chad Feldheimer (Mr. Pitt, essaying the pretty boy airhead with effortless aplomb). Ted wants to woo Linda away from her pitiful reliance on the internet as a provider of desperate one night stands; Chad, when he's not sucking on a plastic water bottle as if it were a milky nipple, assists her in the concoction of an inept blackmail scheme to make use of a CD loaded with what appears to be sensitive CIA intel that the janitor has swept up from the floor of the locker room.

The originator of this data turns out to be Osborne Cox, whose wife has plundered his home computer to access his financials as a prelude to divorce proceedings. What she's inadvertently downloaded along with the money stuff are his momentous-sounding (yet essentially harmless) agency memoirs. How they end up in the locker room of the gym is symptomatic of the level of competence exerted by the players in this farcical game of greed, self-indulgence and infantile spite taken to grand guignol extremes.

In typical Coen Brothers comedic fashion, the most entertaining moments in the film derive from idiosyncrasies of the well-developed oddball characters. For instance, whenever Linda does the mall walk she's alert to the reactions of menfolk lounging on benches as she ambles past: will they give her more than a passing glance? Increasingly, she perceives their gaze passing over her with intentional disinterest. When she encounters an actual double-take (cue the cartoon wolf, goggle-eyed leer of irrepressible womanizer Harry Pfarrer), she emerges from this self-induced (or is it society-induced?) funk. But she still wants liposuction.

Equally entertaining is the mysterious workshop project that Harry pursues in his basement. It involves aircraft aluminum, a customized plastic chair seat and a kind of tool you'd be hard pressed to find at the neighborhood Home Depot.

This lightweight intrigue plays out against a weighty musical score more suited to le Carré than Clouseau, which adds to the ironic delight of the proceedings. (Thanks, Carter Burwell.) By the time these misbegotten events reach their climax, paranoia strikes so deeply at the psyche of Harry Pfarrer that he spots evidence of surveillance around the bole of every tree; he's reduced to a gibbering, wide-eyed prey animal surrounded by a troupe of (mostly) imaginary predators.

In counterpoint, Linda finds herself bedeviled by an all-too-real assemblage of spies, to the extent that - hearing the sound of an aircraft overhead - she looks up to find a man leaning out of a helicopter scoping her out with field glasses.

Prepare to laugh more than you expect to, as this sly little send-up of the Washington spying game - and self-indulgent American society in general - plays itself out across the movie screen.