I tend to watch a lot of action movies, sue me. It’s always a surprise to me when I watch something else and enjoy it, and Burn After Reading is very enjoyable indeed. Watching it straight after Death Race adds some amusement factor as well because Burn After Reading is full of acting and plot and a lot of talking (it’s a Cohen movie, after all). All the folks were great, Clooney, Pitt, Malkovich, Swinton, McDormand, everyone. The movie tells (kind of) the story (a little bit) of a bunch of folk who (eventually) interact in a bizarre (mostly) blackmail scheme. Maybe. The dialogue is excellent, the characters are engaging and amusing, and although I wasn’t sure which of them I should be empathising with the most, I enjoyed them all on one level or another. It goes without saying it’s a black comedy, some of the comedy is side splitting, while a lot of it is far more subtle. It turns out that everyone’s screwing everyone else either literally or figuratively, and the CIA is watching. Everyone. Always.
Burn After Reading is a funny, black, engaging comic story which doesn’t try to say anything, and succeeds. If it teaches us anything it’s that we shouldn’t do it again – whatever it is we did. There are some very amusing OMGWTF moments as well. I recommend it.
It was worth watching, but it left me dissatisfied somehow. Mostly I think it just wasn’t up to the usual standards of the brothers Cohen…. it tried to be Fargo and didn’t quite make it.
I felt the end was a little watered down, although I liked the scene with the CIA I would have liked to have seen the other characters in some closing scenes. However, my only other Cohen experience is No Country for Old Men, I think the end of Burn After Reading is significantly better than No Country for Old Men.