If only the movie was as charming as Clooney looks

Joel and Ethan Coen’s films walk a fine line between compelling and convoluted narratives. Their latest flick, Burn After Reading, a story about two inept employees at the fictional Hard Bodies gym, Linda Litzke and Chad Feldhiemer (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) who stumble upon ex-CIA underling Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich)’s memoir and boorishly attempt blackmail him, falls into the latter category.

The Coen brothers are famous for inept characters. Their black comedies from the 90s heavily featured kidnapping (Fargo, Raising Arizona), accidental death (Miller’s Crossing, The Man Who Wasn’t There), and improbable coincidence (The Big Lebowski, The Hudsucker Proxy). Burn After Reading, the third in a their “idiot” trilogy (following O, Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty) is no exception.

After a entertaining opening scene befitting a CIA thriller, complete with typed-out captions, Google-Earth style locators and impeccable sets, we’re left wondering where our presumptive hero (Cox, who quits his job in memorable fashion after being demoted) has gone, as we follow the other four (!!) main characters through the twists and turns of their pathetic existences. Tilda Swinton is excellent as Cox’s hard-as-nails, cheating wife, who laughs at his stuttering, “Well, I always wanted to write… I was thinking, perhaps, a memoir.”  That’s mem-oir, pronounced the French way, if you please.  But we never really find out anything about her inner workings, except that she’s sleeping with an ultra-sleazy private security professional, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney).

Pfarrer (also married) runs into Litzke on an online dating service, where he seduces women with such time-honored moves as showing them the pistol he’s still carrying around, even though he isn’t doing “personal detail” anymore. Don’t worry.  In twenty years, he’s never “discharged” it. Sense a plot device?

Clooney has some of the film’s funniest lines—his character suffers from both “lactose reflux” and “sea-fish allergies”—but crammed into the ever-complicating plot, they aren’t quite sharp enough to engage us.

Like other Coen brother films, shot by shot, Burn After Reading is beautifully done.  Watch for the lunch scene between Clooney and Swinton, where her red hair and the red lamps contrast nicely against the blue-and-grey backdrop of a swank Washington, D.C. restaurant. D.C. itself plays a prominent role in the film, but to no real effect. It is, unfortunately, an every-man city, dressed up in black cars, aviator sunglasses, and familiar American landmarks.

Overall, the movie ranks slightly below Lady Killers in terms of tedium. Burn After Reading doesn’t have any of the traits most likely to induce my wrath: it’s not nonsensical, indulgent or saccharine. It’s worse: it’s boring. Well, that’s not entirely true: there’s at least one surprising moment deeply embedded in the 96-minute flick, but it’s tough to be surprised when you don’t care about what’s happening.