Burn After Reading

Joel and Ethan Coen's jet-black comedy Burn After Reading begins with CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) losing his job. This prompts his long-suffering, unfaithful wife (Tilda Swinton) to consult a lawyer about divorcing him. Osborne decides to write a book about his exploits, but an early ...more

Vanity is quite a vice. Just ask the characters in the Coen Brothers' latest blood-drenched screwball satire, Burn After Reading. The film goes down like a fine molotov cocktail—stirred with equal doses of narcissism, violence, promiscuity, and paranoia. What better setting for a romp like this than Washington D.C. during an election year? Like the Coens' best fare, Burn After Reading shouldn't make sense on the first watch. If it does, then you probably deserve some sort of award. There's a ...more

The opening shot of the Coen Brothers' new black comedy Burn After Reading takes the viewer from outer space to inside CIA headquarters. The last shot takes us out of that building, back up into space. This device makes it clear that Joel and Ethan are playing God. They have devised a shaggy dog tale where almost every single person acts only in their own self-interest, and nobody gets away unscathed. It's the darkest comedy they've made since Barton Fink, and it might be mistaken for a work of ...more