Burn After Reading Is It Worth Watching?}

Burn After Reading – Is It Worth Watching?

by

James Woolley

Burn After Reading is a semi-satirical semi-witty film about the U.S. intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, to put it bluntly, the movie is simply a disaster, particularly as it was written and produced by the Coen Brothers.

The movie features an all star cast playing less than all star performances. The cast consists of Brad Pitt and George Clooney along with lesser known star Frances McDormand. The story revolves around an ex-CIA agent Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) being laid off from the CIA for no apparent reason. He explodes when he hears about this and decides to write down everything he learned at the CIA.Through a series of unlikely and hardly believable events, the memoirs of this ex-CIA agent end up in the hands of Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt). At first Chad believes he’s stumbled upon an absolute goldmine of information. He first tries to sell the information to Russian informants, and then tries to use it to blackmail Cox and the CIA.Unfortunately, while the storyline might sound comedic and funny, in reality it was much closer to being just plain confusing. Throughout the storyline there are points where it was funny, but the underlying feeling while watching the film is definitely one of ‘What the heck is going on?’Basically, all the way until the end of the movie there’s a sense of pointlessness or triviality. The movie simply doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. At the very end when the CIA director finally asks ‘Do we even know what happened?’ there seemed to be a point – that the CIA doesn’t know what they’re doing – being made. However, the entire movie watching experience was less than impressive.Most of the characters were either poorly played or simply hard to believe. For example, Linda’s prime motivation in life seemed to be to get as much plastic surgery as possible. All the characters were really over the top and hardly believable. Their actions simply aren’t how ‘normal’ people would act in the real world.Overall this might be a good movie to have running in the background while drinking beers with the boys or playing poker. It’s definitely not a film you want to dedicate 90 minutes of your life to watching.It’s humor is sporadic, but overall it’s fairly mind numbing and you’ll have no idea what’s going on throughout the film. Overall I would give it 2 stars out of 5. Not recommended unless you’re a hardcore Brad Pitt or George Clooney fan.

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Burn After Reading – Is It Worth Watching?}