Burn After Reading - Movie Review

The Coen Brothers are back again in an interesting spy type drama. In typical fasion they live out the lives of several characters bring them all together at a point later on in the movie. This summary basically gives away the movie, so don't read further is you haven't seen it, but know it's worth watching.

John Malkovich plays Osbourne Cox, a CIA low level analyst, who is demoted for having a drinking problem, so he up and quits his job. He decides he is going to write his memoires. Osbournes wife Katie, is played by Tilda Swinton, and she is a dry, unhappy type woman whho is not happy and is having an affair with Harry Pfarrer, played by George Clooney.

Katie is planning to divorce Osbourne and burns a CD of his hard drive to give to her lawyers. Little does she know that there are a bunch of files with Osbourne's memoires on it. An assistant at the law office accidently leaves the CD at Hardbodies, a gym in which Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), and Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand)work at. Linda is trying to have all sorts of cosmetic surgeries to help her look better, a face lift, tummy tuck, and other lippo. So she finds out that her insurance won't cover it and now she finds the CD and wants to Blackmail Osbourne Cox.

When Osbourne blows them off they take the CD to the Russians to try and sell it to them. Just no luck whatsoever in trying to get money.

Along the way, Katie kicks Osbourne out and Harry moves in while his wife is off on a book tour. While living with Katie, Harry is dating other women and meets Linda Litzke through a web search. They continue to have an affair on top of his other affair that his wife isn't supposed to know about, but does because of the PI that is hored by the lawyers she is filing divirce papers with. Crazy?

Well, Chad Feldheimer, Brad Pitt, goes to find more information at Osbourne Cox's house. Harry comes home and Chad is stuck in the closet. When Harry opens the closet Chad is smiling at him and he shoots him in the head, freaks out and dumps his body.

While all this is going on the spys are watching and monitoring the situation. Everyone freaks out and they all tie togehter the story and connections in the end.

This is a fun film and really does a good job twisting the stories and bringing them all together. In typical dry humour fashion of the Coen Brothers they make this into a brilliant film.

It's well worth seeing this one and now it's on DVD so reant it for sure.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars