MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

Burn After Reading.  Rated R

Directed by Ethan and Joel Coen.  Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt.

Photo © Universal Pictures
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

Black comedy is hard to do, because it requires the audience to find amusement in watching people do terrible things.  Last year, the Coen brothers directed the tragic film noir No Country for Old Men and walked away with an Oscar for Best Picture.  Even better was their 1996 Fargo, in which there was a moral center to the despair in the character of Sheriff Marge Gunderson. Expectations were high for this spy caper spoof, but Burn After Reading comes up short throughout most of its brief 96 minute running time.  The dialogue is not as mannered, the pacing seems to be very slow (in spite of the fast-paced trailer that was shown on TV), and even some of the gags (included an X-rated homemade sex toy) seem labored.  The plot is a bit of a shaggy dog story about two employees (Frances McDormand and a very funny Brad Pitt) at a fitness center who discover what they believe to be a top secret computer disk and then try to blackmail people in high places to pay for the information.  The data is not as crucial as anyone might think but, since everyone in this film is crazy, logic takes a back seat and people begin to die violent deaths.  Burn After Reading reminded me a bit of the 1959 film Our Man in Havana in which a vacuum cleaner salesman gets involved in espionage and innocently creates mayhem; I also thought about the John Huston goofy 1953 film Beat the Devil.  Let’s face it – I thought about a lot of other films as I sat through Burn After Reading, thoroughly bored.  There’s profanity throughout, as well as meaningless adultery and chicanery, but at its best, this is a trifle of a film with nothing new to say.  I loved the last scene of dialogue between two CIA men, but a memorable last scene does not a memorable movie make. 

Pitchfork Rating: Two halos. (Brad Pitt is hilarious and there are occasional moments of wit in this slow-paced and unsatisfying dark comedy.)  Three pitchforks. (For constant profanity, adultery, murder, and sex-related humor.)

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