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Burn After Reading

Movie Grade: B+

DVD Features Grade: B-

Overall Grade: B

A film with a cast that includes George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and Brad Pitt has the bar set pretty high for itself. Burn After Reading doesn't only meet expectations but exceeds them.

The movie doesn't revolve around any character specifically but Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), and Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) who are all middle-aged characters facing their own crisis. Osbourne recently lost his job working for the CIA. Linda desperately wants plastic surgery and a man in her life. Harry is not only cheating on his wife Sandy (Elizabeth Marvel), but cheating on Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton), Osbourne's wife. That's the long summary, the short summary is that its about idiots in Washington D.C.

I feel like every character is such a bad person. With the exception of Osbourne and Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins) who seem to get jerked around the entire movie. Everyone else is cheating on their significant others and they are all generally bad at being people. The CIA gets a good set of laughs a few times throughout the movie. They have breaks where it cuts to the CIA Superior (J.K. Simmons) who is getting reports of what is going on with all of the characters and it really just make the organization seem stupid as a whole.

It really just seems like anything the Coen brothers have to do with lately is gold. Just before Burn After Reading, they had No Country For Old Men which took four Academy Awards, including best picture. Even in the past they seem to follow their big pictures with off-beat comedies. In 1996 they released Fargo which took two Academy Awards including Best Picture, followed in 1998 by The Big Lebowski. Personally, I hope that Burn After Reading finds similar cult success to The Big Lebowski. It was very well developed and written with an all star cast that really demonstrated how idiotic people can be through; all through a complex series of misunderstandings.

The DVD seems a bit bare bone to me. I expected deleted/alternative scenes scenes, details behind the scenes, and maybe a few others. All the DVD has is three short behind the scenes footage. The footage is interesting and gives some background information from the Coen brothers about how they came up with the characters and situations in the movies.

What confused me about the special features was that it was three different entries that I felt could have easily been one. None of them was particularly long and it looked as if they were all film simultaneously with similar interview backgrounds and other similarities. There is nothing wrong with the fact that they were split but it seems like they only made them into three separate entries to list more

Burn After Reading is definitely something worth the purchase. It offers a different style of dark comedy that you don't see often. For the first twenty minutes you don't know how most of the characters are related and slowly they all fall into place so perfectly. It is very well written and thought out movie, which is only brought down by the fact that the DVD is nearly bare bone. Maybe they are keeping footage for the special edition, but the DVD as a package is brought down with its weak features.

Movie Grade: B+

DVD Features Grade: B-

Overall Grade: B