A Cavalcade of Cruelty
Coen Bros. follow up No Country for Old Men with dark comedy Burn After Reading

Imagine, if you will, a relatively unknown screenwriter giving this pitch: “The movie is about an arrogant alcoholic ex-employee of the CIA who begins to write his memoirs in an attempt to get back at the supervisors who demoted him. His cold adulterous wife accidentally burns his memoirs onto a CD while she is downloading his private financial information. That disc finds its way into the hands of two shallow gym employees who use it to attempt to blackmail the ex-CIA operative. Meanwhile, the operative’s wife’s lover is a serial adulterer who peruses Internet match sites in search of prospective one-night stands. Nobody lives happily ever after.”

In the hands of a novice screenwriter, this movie would never be produced because of its uncomfortable mix of dark humor and graphic violence. Plus, there is not one character you can root for in the twisted scheme of things.

Fortunately, the writers who wrote this particular screenplay are Ethan and Joel Coen. Riding high off the Academy Award-winning success of their previous film, No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers had no problem finding financing for their latest work, Burn After Reading.

The brothers also had no problem when it came to luring star power to this richly comic dark drama. Burn After Reading stars John Malkovich as Osborne Cox, the bitter ex-CIA in question who quits the agency rather than be reassigned to a lesser task than his previous position in the Balkans. The cast also includes Tilda Swinton as his duplicitous wife Katie and George Clooney as her paramour Harry Pfarrer, the pair recreating their intense chemistry first displayed in last year’s Michael Clayton.

The Coxes’ and Pfarrer’s intellectual opposites are the vain and idiotic Hard Bodies Gym employees Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt). When they find the disc filled with sensitive information, they try to finagle a reward from Cox before resorting to blackmail and a trip to the Russian embassy for money.

The cast is completed with the inclusion of two of the best veteran character actors in the business: J.K. Simmons as an unnamed CIA Superior and Richard Jenkins as Hard Bodies manager Ted Treffon.

Burn After Reading starts slowly but builds in tension, dark comedy and some surprisingly grisly violence towards the finish line. Without any character to empathize with, the audience is left to sit back and watch the resulting anarchy prey on protagonists and bystanders alike. With the Coen Brothers’ signature snappy scene changes (aptly imitated in movies such as Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), the movie flies along at a blistering pace and comes in slightly under an hour-and-a-half. The ending leaves the viewer breathless and slightly stunned, but in a way that makes you want to see it all over again.

If Burn After Reading has a major flaw, it is the uneven tone of the film. Too many of the performances, especially those by Pitt and Clooney, are cartoon-y and over the top. It’s as if the two stars are winking to the audience half the time. Meanwhile, Malkovich and McDormand are giving the performances of their lifetimes as self-absorbed wretches watching time catch up with their seemingly perfect lives. Defiant to the end, each of them is willing to risk everything to get what they want. They might have succeeded, too, if the Coen Brothers hadn’t written the script.

Burn After Reading is rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content and violence. It is currently playing at Regal Cinema in Boone.

Lebowski Turns Ten

As a big fan of the Coen Brothers, I must admit that I am slightly confused by the cult-like following of their film The Big Lebowski (I rate it somewhere in the middle of their filmography, below The Hudsucker Proxy and above Barton Fink). When Lebowski first came out in 1998, it was practically ignored by the public earning less than 18 million in its initial box office release.

Since appearing on DVD and on cable television, however, the film has become a cultural landmark, taking on a life of its own. Lebowski-fests, featuring screenings of the films, bowling and lots of white Russians, take place all over the country and the film’s oblique catchphrases “The Dude abides,” “Phone’s ringing, Dude” and “That rug really tied the room together” have become the stuff of tee-shirts and bumper stickers.

For the film’s tenth anniversary, The Big Lebowski is being re-released on DVD with new documentaries, interviews and a limited edition bowling ball-shaped case. Now if the Coens would just re-release Fargo with a miniature wood chipper…