'Burn After Reading' a hit-and-mostly-miss movie

"Burn After Reading" is the kind of patchy, breezy black comedy the Coen brothers could knock off in their sleep.

They probably did.

After mounting last year's highly intense, Oscar-winning study in stylish nihilism "No Country For Old Men," their new anti-intelligence comedy feels like the brothers, Joel and Ethan, needed to lighten up a bit, so they tossed together a cartoon about stupid people acting foolishly and flash-boiled it in a vat of cynicism.

The resulting film works like a broad sex farce mashed together with a shrewd political satire, a combination that seems perfect for the Coens' brand of smart, subversive storytelling. "Burn After Reading" offers occasional flourishes of satirical brilliance - accompanied by Carter Burwell's way-heavy and loud percussion score - but it misfires as much as it hits its targets, even with an inspired cast packing heat.

Chicago's own Steppenwolf Theatre alum John Malkovich brings his patented brand of implicit menace to his role as Osborne Cox, an alcoholic CIA analyst being given a demotion for a problem he insists he doesn't have. He tells his doctor wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) he quit in order to write his memoirs about his years in the agency.

These wind up on a computer disk that falls on the floor of Hardbodies, a local gym where Linda Litzke works.

Linda (Frances McDormand, alias Mrs. Joel Coen) wants to improve her aging body through a series of expensive surgeries that her health plan won't approve. When her shallow best friend and Hardbodies co-worker Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt in glorious comic overdrive) discovers Cox's memoirs, Linda figures she and Chad can make some fast cash by returning the disc for a reward.

No surprise, two stupid people trying to shake down a CIA man in an alcoholic stupor doesn't go well, so the Hardbodies employees take the disc to the Russian embassy in hopes that someone there will pay handsomely for the information.

Up to now, this plot would be enough for most black comedies about spies. "Burn" has much more.

A Treasury agent named Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) has been sleeping with Cox's wife. A serial adulterer with a keen interest in his diet and health, Harry steps out on his own wife, a children's book author (Elizabeth Marvel), usually by meeting women through an online service. That's how he hooks up with Linda, desperate to find a "can-do" man with a great sense of humor and appreciation for dopey romantic comedies, such as the fictional movie-within-a-movie "Coming Up Daisy" starring Claire Danes and Dermot Mulroney.

Clooney's agent is quirky and funny in the same way his hair-cream-obsessed character in the Coens' "O Brother Where Art Thou?" was. Still, Clooney's considerable charm can't smooth over a gross miscalculation where a character gets shot in the face for comic effect, and the effect isn't so comic. (I suspect the Coens intended the moment to be as shockingly funny as Clyde Barrow's first killing in "Bonnie and Clyde,")

Clooney has fun as his agent slides into absurd paranoia. Richard Jenkins continues a superb year, first with "The Visitor" and "Step Brothers," and now with "Burn" where he plays the Hardbodies manager with an unrequited thing for the too-stupid-to-notice Linda.

"Burn After Reading" has no traditional soft spot for romance or marriage. Every relationship winds up in the trash. As one person advises a distraught Osborne Cox, "Grow up, man. It happens to everybody!" You know this comedy is dark when the one character with a pure heart winds up with a hatchet planted in it.

The superb character actor J.K. Simmons, recently of "Juno" fame, nearly commits grand theft of the movie as a CIA chief blithely unconcerned about the agency's image, truth, justice or people's welfare, He just wants the horrendous messes people cause to quietly go away.

And when they do, so does this movie.

"Burn After Reading"

Starring: Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, George Clooney, J.K. Simmons

Directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen

Other: A Focus Films release. Rated R for sexual situations and nudity. 91 minutes.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <ul class="video"> <li><a href="/multimedia/?category=1&type=video&item=197">Gire's video review of 'Burn After Reading'</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>