REVIEW: Burn After Reading

We stewed, steamed and burnt (with fury) after watching it for sure!

Ever heard of OHT? It's called Over Head Transmission. The film can be more or less explained in these three words, really!

The Academy Award winning duo Joel and Ethan Coen or the Coen brothers as they are lovingly called have come up with yet another film that's perhaps too layered for its own good.

So what's the film about?

It's a black comedy, a satire on the political scenario of USA in particular and any and every country in general. It all begins with a secret meeting at the CIA headquarters where the secret soon gets out in the open – Osbourne Cox an analyst played by John Malkovich is being busted and he like anybody else doesn't take this piece of utterly dissatisfying news too well. He goes back home to Georgetown and takes to drinking primarily and also starts work on his memoir.

He tells his wife played by Tilda Swinton (the Academy Award winner, 2008) about all this who doesn't really care and is completely preoccupied with her own clandestine affair with George Clooney.

The film (seemingly political till now) then shifts base to a fitness centre where Linda (Frances Mc Dormand) and Chad (Brad Pitt) work. And the so called political film becomes so apolitical that it even ceases to be funny.

And a series of events follow which are at times funny, at times gruesome and at times simply ridiculous. For instance, Linda is shown to have a fixation with cosmetic surgery. Don't ask Why, How, What and all that…because invariably your questions will not be answered. Chad on the other hand accidentally discovers a disc which has parts of Cox's memoir which include some CIA secrets as well. So the two decide to approach Cox and sell the disc for some good money.

What follows is an unexplained bloodbath of sorts where people kill people, others get jittery and general paranoia sets in. You can try to make some sense out of it but chances are that you won't.

Malkovich teaches us how to say 'F***' in 20000 different ways

What's surprising is that after a brilliant Oscar winning No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers have come up with a film which is confused even about which genre to belong to. Certain scenes are funny, some create suspense. But there is no single thread or storyline to string up the scenes together into a meaningful film. Even the actors look as confused and only shine through in individual scenes rather than standing out in the film.

As the perpetually drunk and half mad Osbourne Cox, John Malkovich does a little more than tell us 20 thousand different ways to say the 'F' word. All his emotions seem to be expressed by that single four letter slang no doubt making it easier for whoever wrote his lines.

The other actors including the Oscar winning actress Tilda Swinton and George Clooney take idiocy to the next level. We don't know what they are doing or why they are doing whatever it is that they are doing…it's all actually a royal mess of events. It is at times sad to see these good actors being reduced to playing a bunch of morons. And hey, the two otherwise extremely good looking men (Clooney and Pitt) look like neanderthal men and a cartoon character respectively doing nothing for the drool factor of the film either!

The film which could have been a worthwhile comedy or a suspense thriller, mixes it all up with trying to be both together. And in its quest to be different and extra intelligent, it ends up becoming completely nonsensical.

Verdict: You might laugh at certain scenes, but the overall experience might not add up to be as much fun. So strictly watch Burn After Reading at your own risk. We almost Burnt (in fury) after watching it for sure!

Rating: 1.5/5