Burn After Reading ~~

I believe in the Coen brothers. I have faith in their story-telling abilities and I absolutely subscribe to the notion that they know what they’re doing. But. And help me our here, especially if I’m wrong – what the frig was going on in this film???

‘Burn After Reading’. I saw the trailers, every version of them, and that may have been the problem. I think I’d already seen the film by the time I took my seat in the cinema. How could something with so many ‘right’ elements go so preposterously wrong?

Let’s begin with the ‘right’s’ – Coen brothers written and directed. Check. Interesting storyline about ordinary folk interacting with each other and the American Government. Check, again. Stellar cast – George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Bradley Pitt, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich and JK Simmons. It’s all there, as it should be and yet, for me nothing really worked.

I really don’t want to give the plot away (plot!!! Let me know if you can find one…) but suffice it to say that the ensemble cast grimace and gurn their way through the ‘story’ to no avail. Frances wants a new body, Brad wants an adventure, George wants a shag (or two…), Tilda wants a divorce, John wants revenge and JK Simmons is left with having to clear up the mess these folk make.

I get the impression the film was meant to play like a farce but I still can’t be sure due to the lack of comedy. Frances was clearly left lacking in the script department (shame on Mr McDormand…) because the amount of face pulling throughout the film was in a league of its own. Brad’s character – bozo gym-bunny with magnificently crap hair ended up being slightly mind boggling. I truly didn’t get his motivation for becoming involved with the espionage scam other than believing the financial rewards would be as great as the adventure. (Losing his bike makes him sad, motivating enough I think!!??!!) A guy like that would never help a gal like Frances attain a new body via plastic surgery? Or would he? May be I missed the point of the quest for body-perfect? Anyway, the gym setting for part of the film was rather interesting purely for reasons of originality.

As for the non-gym bunny characters’ – what was there to like? George was a carousing git (yuck to the heavy gold chain and ‘Dad jeans’) out to find women to test his rather unusual ‘exercising chair’ home-build. Tilda was the ice-queen, bitch doctor boinking George (that would never happen, the character was far too bright to be off with this sad-sack) whilst John was just drunk and mad. If anything, I felt sorry for him! Stuck in this nest of self-obsessed, sex-obsessed nincompoops. I realise all the characters in the film were striving for change; divorce, new career, new body, but frankly I didn’t give a damn because I didn’t like any of them.

Yes, I do get the over-riding themes of paranoia and control. I understand the almost lost comments on Government, Agency, surveillance and secrets. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t presented clearly enough. It was all lost underneath the faux-farce. Heck, I live in the UK, CCTV capital of the world. We are being watched, for better or worse, and maybe we should freak out about it but shooting someone in the face won’t get you anywhere!

More than anything, the casting against type really peed me off. I could stomach John Malkovich as the ex-CIA guy seeking revenge. He plays angry very well. Everyone one else looked like they were having fun but at my expense. Perhaps I’m wrong. I know George C. likes to play ‘ugly’ characters, but this ugly? Mr Pitt was exploring the saner side of his ‘Twelve Monkey’s’ character – jitter much? And Tilda is great at ‘ice’, but lack of character depth (I’m pointing the finger at the script here) let it all down.

The saving grace of the whole film, for me, was JK Simmons as the Agency guy looking down on the mess the ensemble has created. With just a few dismissive lines, he made me laugh, something which I’d been waiting for the entire movie. The idea that ‘zany’ people do unintelligible things is acceptable and the idea that these things are unfathomable and might be swept under the carpet for want of understanding does not surprise me at all.

I’d built my hopes up so much for this movie, after the dearth of decent films over the summer, that perhaps it was my own fault that I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I could have done. I felt barely entertained throughout and guessed the outcome a third of the way through. But saying that, bar ‘No Country for Old Men’, and the fact that ‘Fargo’ took about a decade to really infect and thrill me, all the previous Coen films have really failed to impress me as much as they should have done. I expect so much from the Coen’s that perhaps I’ve scuppered myself before a film even begins. Never mind, ‘No County’ will keep me going for quite a while (see review earlier) and besides, I’m happy to wait for their next. Keep the faith. Parting words on ‘Burn After Reading’, please burn after viewing. (I may, I say ‘may’, just give this another go. I could, after all, be a wrong and misguided fool!) I wanted to believe what I was seeing, I wanted to care about the characters. I’m an absolute ‘spy’ and thriller film nut, in their many guises but, with reference to ‘Burn After Reading’, as William Shatner once ‘sang’, “I just can’t get behind that!”