Burn After Reading Movie Review

It seems that there are a great many films out today with characters so heartfelt, so simpering, and so romantically inclined that the audience member cannot help but wish a certain death upon such characters. In Burn After Reading, however, sentimentality is scarce, yet the comic anvil falls as often upon the characters’ heads as the guillotine in the French Revolution.

            Burn after Reading follows the insipid, interconnecting lives of five very stupid people. Osbourne Cox is fired from his high profile CIA job amid a cloud of rapid-fire and brilliantly placed expletives to the chagrin of his lofty wife Katie. He spends his early “retirement” writing his memoirs, a word he pronounces as though silken French custard against the tongue; they are a couple of some pretentiousness. These documents fall into the hands of two gym employees: Chad, with a werewolf like coif, and Linda, whose life long dream is to get plastic surgery. The two blackmail Cox with the Agency’s secrets, but to no avail, and later, with the desperate action of one who desperately yearns for liposuction and who has read too many John LeCarré novels, pawn off the information to the Russians. Also involved in the thickening plot is Harry Pfarrer, Katie’s secret lover with a penchant for jogging. Bone-dry hilarity ensues, despite a wash of blood.

            For all the enticing qualities of the plot, and for the amusing demises of unusually smart stupid people, and unusually stupid smart people, Burn After Reading is not quite a destination film (unless of course, one is an avid follower of Coen brothers’ pictures). Should you be heading to the theater, Burn After Reading offers ninety-six minutes of parched delight, as well as an ensuing hour or two of sporadic amusement in relation to the clever sentiments expressed in the film, and perhaps a few furtive Chad-like dance moves in the weeks following viewing. There’s no need to burn from memory after seeing, but then again, there’s no burning need to see it at all.

One Response

1. 12:48 PM on October 30th, 2008i p freely:

   ANJA IS SO COOL

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