Burn After Reading

As promised, here's my review of Burn After Reading, the Coen brothers' newest film. Burn After Reading is a dark comedy centering around the odd connection between some CIA/government officials and some people that work at a gym. As you can imagine, making these two groups of people cross paths requires a bit of imagination, but overall, the Coen brothers' do a nice job telling a strange, funny, and generally pointless story.

What really makes this movie shine though is the stellar cast, including Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich, and Frances McDormand, the latter four being caught up in a strange love rectangle (here we go again with the atypical love-polygons). Although these latter four actors were great, their roles were highly typical for them, which wasn't the case for Brad Pitt, easily the shining star of this movie. Despite playing a flat character who doesn't get a lot of screen time, Pitt's Chad is thoroughly engrossing and steals the screen every time he's on.

Overall, though the movie is fun, it's probably not as solid as some of the Coen's other films, and it's certainly no No Country for Old Men, but to be fair, these two films (released within a year of one another) have very little in common in terms of genre or approach. Considering the lack of decent movies out right now, this is certainly the one to see if you feel like heading out to the cinema.