Over the weekend we went to see the Coen Brothers' new movie Burn After Reading.This is the film that bills itself as "the number 1 movie in America" and, indeed, lots of people are flocking to see this dark comedy.
I enjoyed the Coens' Fargo a few years back and I really like Frances McDormand. McDormand, Pitt and John Malkovich are the most vivid characters in this movie, which isn't saying much. Pitt is particularly zany and weirdly charming in a comic turn and his character is probably the most innocent and likeable of the sorry lot. But Malcovich is reduced to repeated blurtings of "F--k!" and McDormand is, well -- McDormand.
In presenting this film the Coens seems to show their total disdain for the characters that they themselves created. The film is empty of any central point, message or even vaguely redeeming quality. You will chuckle at times but you won't feel involved with or empathy for hardly anyone in this movie.
Kyle Smith summed it up in the New York Post:
The Coen brothers invite you to spend $12 in exchange for the information that people are idiots. . . .
Burn After Reading is a cynical, nihilistic outing in which the Coens prove to be disdainful of their own character creations. Kyle Smith of the New York Post says it best:
The Coens are ice-pick cruel, dismissive of sentiment, meticulous in their design and utterly without hope. Sometimes they're so repelled that their work is itself mildly repellent, at least on a first viewing.
BTW: Movies were a lot more interesting when every other word in the script wasn't "F--k!"
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