Movie review: Burn After Reading

Not my favourite Clooney film. Nor for that matter one of my favourite Coen brothers’ projects, but Burn After Reading is, by my rating, thoroughly watchable. A satire baed on the CIA and spy flicks, Burn After Reading features an impressive cast and the usual magical visual touch that the Coens bring with them. The humour is sophisticated, sadistic. Brad Pitt plays another memorable cameo as a half-witted gym rat while Malkovich dazzles as an alcoholic ex-CIA man. It's a wry, roller-coaster of plot, with a string of coincidences and laugh-out loud sketches. My favourite is the one where Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt walk into the Russian embassy and ask to see their main man. As a philandering Treasury agent, Clooney plays a grinning, buffoon version of his otherwise suave self. It’s almost as if the Coen’s decided to make a film with Pitt and Clooney and sat and worked out what part of their real-life personalities is worth ripping into. As a result, their characters, caricatures as they are, are so believable that you find yourself musing ‘If they weren’t million dollar actors, they could be these guys, couldn’t they?’ As a son of a Kentucky politician, a compulsive charmer and laugh riot, I can easily see Clooney in real life as the adulterous Treasury agent. Same goes for Brad Pitt. Minus a few lucky breaks, Brad Pitt could very well be the empty-headed gym instructor, the Coens portray him to be. Pure genius. Go watch it, if you can. If you live in Delhi or Gurgaon, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding tickets. In the multiplex I went to watch it, there couldn’t have been more than 20 filled seats. 10 of whom were there probably because they didn’t get tickets to Dostana. And this was an opening weekend. Speaks volumes for the kind of crowd multiplexes in Gurgaon attract. If it was Bangalore, I found myself boasting to the wife, I’m willing to bet, there would been just a few seats to spare. Perhaps I’m being overly nostalgic and optimistic about Bangalore. The Kannadigas would probably have picketed the theatre because the parking lot signs in Kannada weren’t as big as the English ones.