Ethan and Joel Coen could very well be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Or their careers could be described as such, at least.
For every brilliant, fully realized film such as last year's "No Country for Old Men" and "Fargo" they've released, there's been at least two significantly less watchable (i.e. slow and meandering) ones, such as their "The Ladykillers" remake and "The Man Who Wasn't There." Mainstream acceptance tends to directly follow this Coen tendency: "No Country" won a best picture Oscar and was one of my favorites from last year, while I don't know anyone who loves their "Ladykillers," for example.
It appears they've found some middle ground with "Burn After Reading" — an at-times witty, at other times meandering and nonsensical — comedy about a couple of bumbling fitness center employees who come across some secret CIA documents on the floor of the lady's locker room.
John Malkovich is Osborne Cox, a CIA agent who gets a demotion because of his drinking problem, according to the higher-ups. Disgruntled with the bureaucratic state of a career in government service, Cox decides to write his "memwahs" on his experience with the CIA.
When the information lands in the hands of the intellectually challenged gym employees Chad and Linda (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand), the two are convinced they've stumbled upon some very important "stuff" that could fetch quite the reward. They have no idea what the numbers and dates on the disc mean, only that there sure are a lot of them.
Their attempts to cash in on being good Samaritans by getting the disc to its rightful owner initiates a trail of mayhem and murder, all told in the randomly blunt and cynical style of humor the Coens have come to be known for.
As he often is on Coen pictures, George Clooney is along for the ride as the bed-hopping, womanizing government employee Harry Pfarrar, who gets tangled up in the ill-conceived plot when he picks up Linda via a dating Web site.
Pitt provides the easiest, most obvious laughs here as the spastic fitness trainer Chad, who makes ridiculous dance moves while listening to cheesy dance music on his iPod and who thinks he's in possession of a lot more brain cells than he actually is. If for nothing else, "Burn" is notable in that it manages to make Pitt at least appear to be a quasi-normal, slightly geeky American male, with his puffed-up hair and outfit of white socks and sneakers, polo shirt neatly tucked into his cargo shorts. Plus, his name is Chad.
Clooney, on the other hand, stumbles through most of the picture. Sure, he's charming in an egotistic, self-centered way — a persona he's done countless (too many) times before — but it seemed to me he was just being goofy for the sake of being goofy, like an actor who knows he's insanely wealthy and doesn't really need to be funny anymore to be in major motion pictures.
Whether that's the fault of Clooney himself or the Coens is up for debate, but at the end of the day, it's not that much fun to watch. I would think this shtick would get boring for Clooney, but I guess that's why he's had such a successful career in Hollywood.
Malkovich, on the other hand, is consistently excellent. Playing the neurotically stressed-out Cox, he's often hilarious in belting out insults to whoever's within earshot.
There's a lot going on here, although none of it goes much of anywhere. One gets the feeling that's kinda the Coens' point, though. Those looking for subtle plot twists and satisfying resolutions to conflict — as was the case in "No Country" — should look elsewhere.
Coen movies are always going to be at least slightly "off" to a mainstream audience — I assume that's because their personalities are at least slightly "off" from that of a mass audience. This is fine, and often makes their successes that much sweeter. Once in awhile, the two sides meet, and everyone (relatively speaking) is happy.
While a good portion of Coen diehards are bound to find much to like here, to me it seemed much more like a lackadaisical effort from a couple of guys still basking in the glory of the most well-received film of their career.
"Burn After Reading?" I'll just skip ahead to their next chapter, thanks.
Joel Sensenig is news editor of the Review Times.