Title : Burn After Reading
Vital Stats:

Director: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Starring:

George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances Mc Dormand, John Malkovich, Tida Swinton, Richard Jenkins, Olek Krupa

Runtime: 95 minutes (eternity really)

Plot: Osbourne Cox (Malkovich) is an ex CIA employee who quits CIA and decides to write about his experiences as a memoir. His wife Katie (Tida Swinton) is screwing Harry (George Clooney) and is planning on divorcing him. On the advise of her lawyer she compiles a disk with the information about Cox's finanaces etc and ends up including his memoir in the disk. That disk is subseuqently lost and is found by Linda (Frances) and Chadd (Brad) who work together in a gym. They try to sell the disk to get some money out of the entire situation.

Well this is the plot as "advertised" however trust me this plot counts only for about one fourth of the movie. For the remainig, see My Psychobabble section.




My Psychobabble: An awesome movie headed straight in the category of Oscar nominations. Which means it is completely and utterly unsuitable for average, fun loving "Joe the plumber" kind of audience like yours truly (there you go, I brought Joe the plumber in my conversations too. Now I am in the US presidential race as well! he he he!).

Gosh I was so bored. It was a perfect cure for insomnia. Granted there were some funny moments in the movie but it was like watching an act performed by clowns who are desperately trying to entertain you but are failing so miserably that they put you off to sleep. Not to be discouraged they often come upto you and tickle you up to make you twitch slightly in the sleep but that is as far as they can go to entertain you. The moment they withdraw you promptly fall back into your sleep again.

That is all I can say about the "comic" factor of the movie.

There is no script whatsoever or should I say there is no one set or fixed script whatsoever. It is like a BIG BOSS or BIG BROTHER show with few characters thrown together for people to watch their antics and be amused  by them. The movie kicks off as a story about Cox (Malkovich) but then like a quickly growing tumor it spawns too many tentacles too soon which starts killing the interest of the viewer. While these plots are introduced quiet quickly they eventually  all unravel at a drastically slow pace which gives you enough time to wonder  what the heck are you still doing sitting here in the cinema hall and then about your general life and its purpose etc. etc.  As for the direction while some might argue about the unique style of Coen brothers most of the audience would struggle too much to make any sense from the movie to be bothered by the uniqueness if any in the style (if any).

Scripts and direction apart, all the actors have performed superb. I especially liked the way Brad Pitt has lived his character. He was simply brilliant and for a good length of the movie overshadowed everyone else.


Verdict: Treat this like the hot fire it is which means staying clear away from it. But then again if you are one of those blessed children of God who have a panache for "art" and "uniqueness" and the usual high tea gossip then you really don't want to miss this one! Go slurp it up!Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,