LogFAQs > #969772681

Time to go into overdrive to make it up to you guys. Plan was to watch two shorter movies tonight

Burn After Reading (2008)
Written & Directed by: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton
Previous status: Never seen

"I thought... you might be worried... about the security... of your shit."

It has been a long time since I laughed like that. That one line was so perfectly delivered and equally perfectly staged. This not only shows the Coen Brothers' genius (this is the third of theirs I've seen, after True Grit and Big Lebowski) but also how good Brad Pitt was in this role, the dumb jock who only ever wears his personal trainer uniform (unclear why that's a polo, but still). Really, everyone was great - and they felt typecast. And that's because they were. The Coens wrote these roles for their stars, and it shows. George Clooney womanizing the middle-aged feels very apropos given how many ladies that age love the guy.

The first thing I must note is that the movie drops us RIGHT into things. We first get to see Ozzy Cox (Malkovich) getting demoted, which leads him to quit his job as an intelligence analyst. And later, Frances' McDormand's character Linda is getting examined for plastic surgery (why she'd need that, I do not know), and that's our intro package for her. You have to watch closely to understand who's who at first but it works fine in the end, when things come together nicely. This may have just been 90 minutes, but it was a GOOD 90 minutes. So many moving parts of what can feel like a conspiracy to most of these dimwits just interlock perfectly to make a beautiful mess.

Ozzy's wife, Katie (Swinton), is both a doctor and a criminal; wanting divorce from Ozzy to be with Harry (Clooney), who's also seeing at least three other women, including his wife, who's ALSO cheating on him, who... you get the point. Because she sucks, Katie changes the locks so Ozzy can't get his stuff and empties his bank account under the logic that "it's her money, too." When it was HIS account, and she stole from him. Why a doctor would need to become a thief, I do not know. Sadly, she never gets her comeuppance - really, the only thing is Harry leaving her because she's such a Karen. I really liked how he called her ass out - she deserves to be alone.

The best part after the "security of your shit" phone call (my goodness, that was AMAZING) was probably Chad (Pitt) breaking in to the Cox house to spy music, thinking he could steal more files even though what he has hasn't amounted to much. Chad and Linda had tried to fence the DVD-R with Cox's memoir on it, thinking it was "serious intelligence shit," to the Russians, because you know darn well that Vlad would LOVE to get involved in this. Other characters are confused but I am not, but this was 2008. This was before Vlad started nosing his way into our elections (FUCK VLAD!). Still, there's a CIA spy who redirects the DVD, even though it doesn't have anything of value to the government on it. It's just a memoir and financial records of Ozzy and Katie, which Katie is using to embezzle because, again, she sucks. Katie is a crafty crook, mind you, and she's running circles around the idiots surrounding her. I presume this is indicative that to get ahead, you gotta get dirty.

But with the break-in, Ocean's 11 this is not: Both Chad and Harry are idiots (in the "League of Morons" as Ozzy put it), and because for whatever asinine reason he chose to go upstairs and hide in the closet (when knew that Harry was wearing exercise clothes when he'd left), Chad ends up getting shot with Harry's finger and Harry's subsequent freak-out was amazing. Even though he's the one who killed the intruder, he's paranoid and freaking out (despite being a U.S. Marshal) and presuming he's being spied on (he really only is by a grunt working for his wife's divorce attorney). It all unravels when he learns that Linda, whom he's also fucking, was Chad's associate, and there's MORE spy-shit freakouts. There's also Ozzy killing the gym manager, Ted, with an axe for burglarizing his home, and the CIA spy murdering Ozzy for no reason thereafter. Like... hello? Clearly he's chasing out an intruder.

Really, this movie had a lot for just an hour and a half, with old people fucking (okay, late 40s, but still), money-grubbers, a brief car chase and a brief foot chase, dildo chairs (the fuck is the point of that?), conspiracies like it's a thriller... honestly, what genre is this? It has comedy. It has relationship drama. It has political commentary (kinda). It has interlocking pieces. It's really trapped in a zone that's not bound to any genre. The movie is enjoyable for that at times, but confusing at others. With it being difficult to place, there lacks a basis for comparison; it stands out as unique at the same time it's hard to discern if you're supposed to take anything from it. But it's enjoyable while it lasts, so for that, I'll give it a 4/5.

@BetrayedTangy @Snake5555555555 you each get another nomination! Keep the good ones coming!

And now, I'm gonna go watch another one. Hence the less detailed write-up. See yas soon!