Burn After Reading (2008)

This latest Coen brothers movie attempts to do for the espionage picture, what The Big Lebowski did for film noir. As you may recall Lebowski was about an L.A. area slacker who gets involved in a story line in which he had no business being in, namely an over-complicated often obscure Raymond Chandler-esque mystery. In Reading we find three employees from a D.C. area gym (Hardbodies) inserting themselves into the world of espionage, blackmail and adultery, a world in which they are far from competent enough to be playing in. The movie, is uneven. It starts out kind of broad, and eventually takes an almost jarring turn into dark territory, becoming No Country For Old Men-like in its violence. Though the darker second half in may ways works better then the relatively lighter first, it also feels kind of uncomfortable, because of the way the dimmer characters are massacred, both physically and psychologically. Like this summers Hancock, Reading also has the feeling of two different films trapped in one movie, though in this case an uneasy alliance between the two holds up, unlike the near literal surrender of the first film to the second in the Will Smith vehicle. Burn After Reading is in any case a great showcase of character actors, and should be used to aid in the casting of other movies. The funniest scenes here where the few between David Rasche (let him be rediscovered please), and J.K. Simmons, as the CIA big wigs trying to figure out just how the employees at Hardbodies got mixed up in this mess. A lot of the other humor falls flat. In spite of this I liked the move enough to give it a 3 out of 5, even an unsuccessful Coen brothers film is more interesting then most other contemporary movies.