Burn After Reading
- Burn After Reading review by CP Customer
"Burn After Reading"
I would
"Burn this film before watching"
It was one of the worst films I have watched in a long long time.
4 out of 9 members found this review helpful.
Forget After Viewing
- Burn After Reading review by Count Otto Black
Despite being a Coen brothers fan, I thought I must have somehow missed seeing this when in came out 8 years ago. But as I started watching, it felt oddly familiar. It gradually dawned on me that I'd seen it after all, but I couldn't remember a thing about it. It's very unusual indeed for me to completely forget a film. Unfortunately, having watched it again, I can understand why I found it so forgettable the first time round.
This is an attempt to recapture the magic of "The Big Lebowski" by recycling its essential themes and plot elements. Misguided people with strange, obsessive agendas pursue a MacGuffin they think, wrongly, is valuable, and the production team assume that much hilarity will ensue. One scene from "The Big Lebowski" involving a very minor character is repeated almost exactly, and the same menacing music (from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition") that accompanies Jeff Lebowski's landlord's dance is heard when somebody's call is put on hold, just to tip us the wink. But this time round, everything falls embarrassingly flat.
Almost all the characters are horrible, shallow people obsessed with their outward appearances because there's nothing really going on inside them, whose numerous sexual entanglements are so joylessly robotic that one of them has even built a huge and extraordinarily creepy mechanical sex-toy just so we don't miss the point of that subtle bit of satire. With a mean-spiritedness which has become more and more apparent in their later work, the Coens show us nasty people motivated entirely by greed, lust, vanity and spite being nasty to each other, decide more or less randomly which of them will get away with it, mete out ghastly fates to those who don't, and introduce one token character with finer qualities just to be dumped on because hey, life isn't fair, even in comedies!
Several excellent actors are underused in multiple subplots which never properly cohere. Tilda Swinton in particular has absolutely nothing to do except be so unpleasant that it's impossible to understand why two other people in the movie find her attractive. John Malkovich is his usual irrepressible self, but he interacts so little with the main protagonists that he's barely in the same film. George Clooney is cast against type as a charmless creep, which kind of defeats the object of hiring George Clooney. And Brad Pitt is annoyingly unfunny as a man-child with the IQ of live yoghurt. The jokes don't work, you don't care about the characters, and the plot exposition is lazy and confusing, as if even Joel and Ethan Coen had begun to lose interest before they'd finished filming. It wouldn't even deserve two stars if it wasn't for some of the acting. Definitely one to file and forget.
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
burn before watching....
- Burn After Reading review by CD
Totally dire, not funny in any way, shape or form. Thought that a couple of big name actors would not sign up for a film this bad, the script must have been dire as well, has to be on my worst film ever list!
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Burn before viewing.
- Burn After Reading review by CP Customer
Oh really, this is so bad.
I really like the Coen Brothers output, but this? ...... this resembles a very poor attempt at farce by too-smart American film students, not the champions of left-field quirk.
Seriously, I've seen 'Carry-On' films do farce better - and with more depth and characterisation too.
Such a shame. I thought some of the actors did a decent job - I actually loved Brad Pitt, so far out of his usual field, Frances McDormand was great, John Malkovich supremely brilliant..... but there was just nothing there.
I reached the end and thought: "Oh"
Yeah yeah, I 'got' the references, I 'got' the (attempted) satire...... but sometimes we have to just accept that some great film makers create some really poor work. This is so for the Coen Brothers.
'Emperors new clothes' came to mind when I read some reviews post-viewing.
Two stars because I don't think all of the cast did a bad job, they were just given a clumsy, empty, characterless script.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Coen Pitstop
- Burn After Reading review by CP Customer
Burn After Reading is very much a comedy that only the Coen Brothers would set out to make and deliver. At times it is too smart and pretentious for its own good, but there are flashes of brilliance amidst the pedestrian directing and stale American environments.
John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton both excel in their roles as the hard-nosed couple from hell. Their relationship is far from perfect yet by the end of the film you know they are ideally suited. Those expecting a Brad Pitt vehicle will be disappointed, but for those of us following the Coen’s trail, it is another enjoyable if slightly haphazard offbeat experience.
After No Country For Old Men, arguably the only way is down, yet this is a modest dip in quality. While I still had some questions at the end about what happened to a couple of characters, it is a fun, intelligent and humorous 96 minutes in a sea of rude comedies that grace our theatres nowadays.
1 out of 4 members found this review helpful.
OMG what a load of bilge
- Burn After Reading review by CP Customer
please dont waste 92 mns of your life watching this its absolute rubbish it really is...was waiting for something to really happen and the ending well the less said about that the better
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Read the reviews - it'll save you time.
- Burn After Reading review by Karrie
Believe the three reviews Burn before Viewing, Burn After Reading and Forget after Viewing.
Rare I don't like a film, I love slow enigmatic films and dry comedy. Despite enjoying the perfomances of the main actors ( John Malkovitch being very John Malkovitch, Tilda Swinton being great as ever, Frances McDormand's self-obsessive, Brad Pitt as an amazingly cringy youth and George Cluney being really creepy) - it was dire: the whole family thought so.
A potentially hilarious storyline and characters, missing most of its targets.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Love it!
- Burn After Reading review by GB
We saw it the other week and have ordered it again. Seem to be swimming against the tide here but my wife and I loved this. Crazy plot, crazy characters and worth renting for Brad Pitts character alone.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
A Clever satire - Worth The Effort
- Burn After Reading review by GI
This is a wonderfully scripted farce from the Coen Brothers, a situation comedy that relies on assumptions, greed and stupidity to weave a convoluted tale that satirises the spy film genre. With it's top cast this is a film worthy of re-evaluation, it's adult and very funny and it's great to see these actors playing against type. The plot involves a floppy disc that contains the rather boring memoirs of Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a former CIA analyst sacked for his drinking problem. His snobbish wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) wants a divorce and expects her married lover, Harry (George Clooney), a sex obsessed Treasury Agent, to move in with her. The disc gets lost and is found by two hapless gymnasium employees, Linda (Frances McDormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt) who think they've come across secret intelligence files. Their attempts to bribe Osborne results in all the characters getting embroiled together in some very unexpected ways. The film has some very unexpected surprises and you'll gasp with some shocked laughter at times and like all of the Coens' film it goes in directions you will not anticipate. This is what makes their movies such great fun and here in this comedy they are clearly having a great time with the characters most of which were written specifically for the actors playing them. Brad Pitt especially excels as the amiable but thoroughly stupid Chad. This is an underrated film but one I recommend because it's adult comedy that is well written, and wonderfully performed.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Surprisingly good, but not perfect
- Burn After Reading review by BS
I was surprised at the negative reviews for this film.
I think the problem is that this is a farce in the classic British tradition, and has to be judged as such, rather than something more sophisticated. The cast is excellent, and have fun with their characters. The script is strong with some great moments and gives pace and energy. The plot is convoluted, but not hugely important as it is set up to support the scenarios.
It is true that non of the characters are likeable, but I don't think that detracts from it. Tilda Swinton is brilliant if a bit typecast as cold and unsentimental. Frances McDormand is superb as insecure and, ultimately, completely out of her depth. I thought Brad Pitt's gormless personal trainer was hilarious.
There are some shocking surprises onscreen, but what is odd is how a number of key events happen offscreen. This is particularly true of the denouement, which felt like it was not the original plan.
While it isn't Raising Arizona, it is certainly worth a watch, and served well while ensconced on the sofa on New Year's Day.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.