Burn After Reading

The film after the Coen Brothers masterpiece No Country for Old Men, that didn't sit to well with people for some reason. Sadly, it's highly underrated but, only because it came after that monolith of a film that it did. You don't see films like Burn After Reading anymore. It's classic Spy vs. Spy type plot only it's the biggest spoof film of the genre, ever. It's a bunch of normal civilians running around playing espionage and the CIA isn't even involved. This just proves that the Coen Brothers are ready to make whatever film they want whenever they want. People were so anticipating something as incredible as No Country for Old Men but, good God, have people for gotten their list of films and the pattern in which they flow? Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, No Country for Old Men, and now Burn After Reading. Can you kind of see the pattern? If you don't you aren't a Coen Brothers fan.

The story follows a group of people loosely related to one another in some connection other than they live in the Washington D.C. area. Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), is a newly unemployed American from his position at the CIA who denies to admit he was fired to his wife Katie (Tilda Swinton). Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), is a married Treasury agent who brags about having the license to carry a gun but has never had to fire it in his years of being with the Treasury who is having an affair with Osbourne's wife Katie. Harry leads an additional life to his job, and affair, and meets ladies online through online dating websites. Through this he meets a middle aged woman named, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who works at a local gym. Linda is looking to reinvent her self through cosmetic surgery so she can feel young again and find that special someone to feel complete again. While at work her friend and fellow co-worker, Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), find a disk in the Hardbodies ladies locker room in which they believe contains valuable information into CIA secrets. A name is found among the disk's gibberish, Osbourne Cox. They decide to hold the disk ransom so that the two can get money for Linda's surgery. After that shit hits the fan.

Forty years from now this film will be regarded as a cult classic. That's at least my prediction of course, I can see to where it wouldn't become one but, I have hope that it will. Sure it flew under the radar but, it just adds on to the deck of wild cards the Coen Brothers have up their sleeves. The characters crash into one another like waves in the ocean to create a climactic unfold to a very serious but, unfortunate turn of events. If I had to highlight any single thing in this film I'd say it was a triumph for John Malkovich. This is the best thing that I believe he's done possibly since Being John Malkovich, and in the same year he was cast in the Clint Eastwood film along side Angelina Jolie in The Changeling. I'm sure a lot of people were undermined by the usage of Brad Pitt in the film but, hey, it proves to me that Brad Pitt can be funny as well as, serious.

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