The most surprising thing about Burn After Reading, the new Coen Brothers spy comedy, is Brad Pitt – despite being 44, the Pittster could easily pass for a hard-living late 20s as brainless gymworker Chad. Part of this is mannerisms – Pitt chews gum, gulps soda, blasts on his iPod, moves and grins like an idiot with odd hair to boot (what is it about the Coen Brothers and hair? Remember Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men; that stuff acted by itself). The key may be that Chad looks like someone who thinks he is early 20s but is more than a decade on. Here’s another factor which may have helped, but Pitt’s turn in Burn is every bit as compelling as Tom Cruise’s in Tropic Thunder.
Elsewhere it is essentially a comedy of petty, pointless individuals – scurrying around like hungry ants, pursuing adultery, money, positivity and youth. The ageing character Frances McDormand plays becomes obsessed with plastic surgery (a nice counterpoint to Pitt’s appearance), and the film veers away from what, at first, looks like it might be a long straight dive into the miseries of late-life singledom.
Scenes which could be difficult, long-winded or bloody are tied up by cutaways to a secret service office, where the characters’ petty infidelities and blackmails are put into perspective by people whose perspective you don’t trust. Regardless, this is a relief. Who wants to see someone cut up and dump a body in a comedy? This isn’t Eastern Promises, dammit. Contrary to some reports, the film does ‘end’, at least in terms of the plot, albeit in a deus ex machina form (if it’s good enough for the Greeks?). The difficulty is that the remaining characters aren’t wound up; there’s not much justice, if you will. The balancer is that they’re almost all so unpleasant it doesn’t matter.
Here’s a question: is the film’s theme, that these petty people are all so unimportant as to be beneath wrapping up properly, more indicative of laziness than cleverness? As with No Country For Old Men, you can come out of the cinema feeling like you’ve been had. On the other hand, it’s a comedy and one that does what so many don’t: make you laugh. Isn’t that more important?
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 