Details
Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand
Running Time: 96 Minutes
Status: US – 12/9/08 / UK – 17/10/08
Genre: Comedy
Synopsis: A dark spy-comedy from Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen. An ousted CIA official’s (Academy Award nominee John Malkovich) memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise gym employees intent on exploiting their find.
Reviews
The Hollywood Reporter – Kirk Honeycutt
In “Burn After Reading,” the Coen brothers have taken some of cinema’s top and most expensive actors and chucked them into Looney Tunes roles in a thriller set in and about Washington.
After their triumphant dramatic success with No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers revert to sophomoric snarky mode in Burn After Reading. A dark goofball comedy about assorted doofuses in Washington, D.C.
The film itself may be a bit of an afterthought down here on the Lido. Clocking in at a crisp 95 minutes, Burn After Reading is a tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy that couldn’t be in bigger contrast to the Coens’ last film, the bloodsoaked, brooding No Country for Old Men.
The Independent – Geoffrey Macnab
“Report back to me when it makes sense,” the CIA boss tells an underling midway through the Coen brothers’ deliriously confusing comedy thriller.
