The Idiot Plot done right

Burn After Reading
Review by Nathan Weinbender

The plot of “Burn After Reading,” the newest from Joel and Ethan Coen, resembles a cat’s cradle, with strands twisting and turning and colliding every which way.

It’s a goofball espionage comedy in which all of the characters are either bumblers or fumblers, and the Coens send their story off in so many different directions that they’ve included scenes (no doubt echoing their writing conferences) in which two CIA operatives survey the damage of the screenplay and try and figure out exactly what is going on. “Call me when you’ve figured everything out,” one of them tells the other.

The Coens have always reveled in the idiocy of their characters, and they like to put dunderheads in impossible situations and watch them flounder. In “Burn After Reading,” a group of moronic gym employees discover a CD containing files that they assume are top-secret CIA documents. When they blackmail the owner of the disc in hopes of obtaining a serious ransom, nothing, as do most things in the Coens’ universe, goes quite as planned.

Linda (Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt) are the gym employees, and when they discover who encrypted the material on the CD, they call him up. He’s Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a former CIA agent, now a drunken sledgehammer of a man. He wants to know who the callers are. He’s told that they’re “good Samaritans.” Chad demands money. Cox won’t pay up.

Meanwhile, Cox’s wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), is having an affair with a former Secret Service agent named Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a sex addict who, while trolling internet dating sites, meets up with Linda and begins a relationship with her on the side. As those CIA operatives I mentioned earlier surmise, “Everyone seems to be sleeping around with each other.”

As all this transpires, misunderstanding piles atop misunderstanding, everybody’s identity becomes a mistaken one, unexpected bursts of violence occur and dead bodies start to turn up. And a number of questions begin to bubble to the surface, namely what’s the mysterious device Harry is constructing in his basement? I won’t reveal the secret, but let’s just say it seriously brightens Linda’s demeanor.

Since their debut with the magnificent “Blood Simple” in 1984, the Coen brothers have consistently alternated between brilliantly-crafted thrillers and off-the-wall comedies, which have ranged from demented to breezy to, in the case of “Barton Fink,” damn near apocalyptic. “Burn After Reading” comfortably straddles both of their favorite genres, and, like their masterpiece “Fargo,” its complications come from planting know-nothing simpletons in the midst of chaos and violence that they’re not equipped to handle.

I have yet to mention the performances, which are excellent. I especially love Frances McDormand as a woman who wants nothing more than companionship, but who is too dense to realize that her soft-spoken manager (Richard Jenkins) carries a torch for her. And what will she do with Cox’s ransom money? Well, she tells herself that she desperately needs liposuction, which seems a bit extravagant for somebody who has full disposal of exercise equipment.

Brad Pitt is the stand-out here, terrific as Chad, the airhead fitness fanatic, and he gets the movie’s few big laughs. He desperately tries to appear mysterious and diabolical, yet when he first meets with Cox, he comes on his bike. And when Cox doesn’t appear to be intimidated by him, Chad tells him, “Appearances can be…deceptive.”

I’ve been deliberately vague in describing the plot of “Burn After Reading,” because one of the film’s pleasures is watching as the script heaps on complications and dodges down unexpected alleyways. But there is, dare I say, a certain, unexpected sadness lingering at the corners of the picture. As the storyline becomes more and more tangled, we come to realize that no matter what these characters do, no matter how they act, no matter where they end up, the catalyst of their fates has been one colossal misinterpretation.

To sum it all up in the words of those befuddled CIA guys: “No biggie.”

Grade: B+

Directed and written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. Starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins and J.K. Simmons. R; 96m.