Movie Review: Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading, I didn’t know what to expect from this movie. The Coen Brothers have written and produced some amazing films like No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, and Fargo, but the genre and basic plot of their movies vary so much that I didn’t know if this was going to be the comedy it appeared to be in the trailers or something more serious.

The story is about this disk that contains the memoirs of a former CIA analyst, it ends up in the hands of two unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to blackmail the CIA agent or sell it to anyone interested. The movie starts off pretty slow, but I think that’s because they wanted to introduce all of the characters with a short background before they got into all of the twists and turns that come into play later in the film. So it starts slow but it all comes together quick and you’ll be glad they did it in the end. The whole concept of showing separate people’s lives come together in one way or another has been done before; I guess a couple recent examples of this could be movies like Vantage Point, and Crash. What separates Burn After Reading from other movies like it, besides being a comedy, is the surprising amount of effort put into the story and how well it was all executed.

The movie features a rockstar cast with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and John Malkovich. I think saying that the acting in this movie is superb would be understatement. Everyone plays an excellently hilarious role and they all do it so well. On top of the good acting you get a great dialogue and subtle details which makes this movie top notch to the very end. I loved it.

With that said, if you’re looking for something original or a good sans-family comedy to see at the theater this weekend, then you need to see Burn After Reading.