When coming up with ideas for unique and clever films, the Coen brothers have to be some of the best storytellers in Hollywood. They’re great at delivering the well-paced, off-beat tale with plenty of unexpected events keeping the audience on their toes as to what will happen next. Imagine you’re sitting in one of their brainstorming sessions; they take all their whacky character and plot ideas concerning the CIA, put them in a bag, give it a good shake, randomly pick a handful of concepts and attempt to generate a story around them. That’s what Burn After Reading feels like. Complete randomness with impossible coincidences.
 
Employees at a Hardbodies Gym find a CD containing the memoirs of former CIA analyst Osborne Cox. Mistaking it for classified material, the dim-witted duo attempt to blackmail Cox and when that fails, they turn to the Russian Embassy in an attempt to score a payday there. Meanwhile Cox’s wife is having an affair with a security agent in the Treasury Department who is an obvious sexaholic. As the characters paths become more tightly mingled, tension raises creating a series of neurotic and unexpected events at the end of the film.
 
Before going into where things go awry with this movie, I have to give props to the Coen brothers. No other filmmakers in Hollywood could have gotten the backing to have this film made. It’s incredibly wonky with characters that identifying with are impossible. The relationships between the characters are the strongest parts of this movie and that proves to be the only glue holding a flimsy plot together. The glue, unfortunately, isn’t quite strong enough to last the entire film.
 
The pacing in this begins very sluggish. It almost feels like the directors were in an No Country for Old Men hangover. Where the methodical pacing works in No Country, it just makes Burn slow out of the gate and leaves you wanting the story to roll along quite a bit quicker.
 
The movie suffers from horrible overacting, especially from Pitt and Clooney. You’d think Michael Meyers is helping coach the actors, dressed as Austin Powers and everything. What should be small nuances tend to be acted out in obnoxious manner giving the film the feel of a high school play. A very disappointing showing for a cast with this much experience.
 
There is humor in the story but, much like the acting, it tries too hard. It leans toward the shocking style of humor which is completely random and out of place. It should lean more toward character-driven humor and not object-driven humor the way it does.
 
Finally, the plot goes nowhere. It seems to be a study of impossible coincidence between a small group of individuals. After sitting through the film, the payoff is lame. You might leave feeling slightly amused as I did but that’s about all you can take from it.
 
In overhearing a conversation about the film on the way out of the theater, one guy said, “...it was just a little too weird. I didn’t see the point at all.”
 
Looks like I missed the point, also.

Verdict | NOT!