Apparently perturbed by the respectability incurred by their Oscar-winning dramatic foray No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen retreat to the comfort zone of cockeyed comedy, long their genre of choice. But relative to Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski and the other movies on which their reputation is staked, Burn After Reading shows a decline in panache and an increase in contempt for their own creations. This is hardly the first film the Coens have populated with boneheads, but since these characters are such a charmless, vapid, one-note lot, it’s rarely been harder to care what happens to them.
The ripe possibilities of the setting make this misfire especially unfortunate. A series of characters in the DC area — including John Malkovich as an alcoholic CIA analyst, George Clooney as a vain womanizer, Frances McDormand as a surgery-obsessed fitness-club employee and Brad Pitt as her even dumber co-worker — stumble into each other’s lives due to overlapping acts of espionage, blackmail and adultery. While the cast is plenty game and there are a few laughs to be found, as well as a few sharp digs at the surveillance-happy habits of Americans living under the Patriot Act, the brand of humour here lacks the requisite zing for screwball comedy. The movie’s utter lack of coherence scuppers its ambitions as satire, too. Not that the Coens seem to care much when their shoddily constructed narrative finally collapses: the air of indifference poisons the entire movie.