Burn After Reading – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees Dec 21, 2008, 11:13 GMT

When a disc filled with some of the CIA’s most irrelevant secrets gets in the hands of two determined, but dim-witted, gym employees, the duo are intent on exploiting their find.    But since blackmail is a trade better left for the experts, events soon spiral out of everyone\'s and anyone\'s control, resulting in a non-stop series of hilarious encounters! ...more

No surprise that The Coen brothers followed up their Oscar-winning triumph 'No Country for Old Men' with something a bit lighter. This being a Coen brothers film, this is 'light' comedy via nihilists, misanthropes, and complete boobs who all intertwine in both effective and ineffective ways. 

Probably one of their most accomplished casts including favorites George Clooney, Frances McDormand and J.K. Simmons as well as Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and Richard Jenkins, there's no shortage of loony starpower on the screen although one gets the impression most would have passed on the script had the Coen Brothers not been directing as the actors every so often feel as lost as the audience. 

The film was not confusing in the sense of being particularly intricate but it seemed more arbitrary as a whole, an exercise in forward momentum rather than necessity. The joys come from the small moments of dialogue and performance. The plot such as it is revolves around a CD of seemingly important Federal intelligence documents found at an exercise gym by personal trainers Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand). 

Linda, unhappy with her body, needs money for numerous aesthetic surgeries and gun-chomping Chad just seems to want to help despite an IQ that my 3-year old daughter would put to shame. So they decide to blackmail the owner of the CD for some money - a 'reward' in their eyes. The CD belongs to Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), an alcoholic canned in the opening moments of the film by the CIA with Cox telling everybody he quit the CIA to write his memoirs. 

Osbourne’s wife Katie (Swinton) seems all-around disgusted by him, indeed an insufferable-looking chap, and is having an affair with Harry Pfarrer (Clooney), a married man who seems content to date almost anybody that falls in his way and while he's having an affair with Katie, he also likes to internet date which leads him to the aforementioned Linda.

Needless to say, Cox doesn't fall easily into blackmail and all the characters revolve around each other and get their hands a bit dirty in absurdly violent ways. 

All the elements of a quirky, fun Coen brothers ride seem to be in place but the film's tone this time out is slightly out of whack. While Brad and George seem to be running on slapstick a la 'Raising Arizona' and 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ Malkovich seems to have stumbled in from 'Miller's Crossing'. The slapstick, more perceptive dialogue of McDormand, and the violent fits of Malkovich all clash in ways that don't quite gel. 

Running at a spry 96 minutes, the film also doesn't seem to know where it wants to end - it just...ends. Nothing really felt resolved although I would struggle to guess what would happen next.

All that being said, there's plenty of fun moments for Coen stalwarts and the ensemble cast, despite different approaches, all find effective moments be it full-blown idiocy or smaller insights. And the Coen's dip into their usual bag of visual tricks to provide some great camerawork. 

All in all, it’s not a bad film, but certainly one of the lesser Coen works, and with their previous film getting Best Picture, most, I included, expected a bit more than this slight entry in the Coen canon.

The 1080p AVC 1.85:1 high-def encode gets the job done and is perfectly acceptable but the film itself will never lend itself to jaw-dropping high-def visuals. The color palette is slightly muted but there still nice detail and depth with some slight inherent grain. Universal gives us a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless track and like the video, gets the job done.

Special Features are a bit slight compared to recent big high-def releases. We get three short featurettes 'Finding the Burn', 'DC Insiders' and 'Welcome Back, George' all featuring cast/crew interviews. Nothing particularly enlightening although par for the course for Coen Brothers films on home media who seem to have little interest in this whole ‘DVD’ and ‘Blu-ray’ phenom.

This overall package is a ho-hum affair - a purely average Coen brother’s effort with okay video and audio and not much in the special features department. An obvious rental for fans of the Coens and the cast, I would suggest a purchase to Coen completists only.

Burn After Reading is now available at Amazon. Visit the DVD database for more information.