Movies You Might Have Missed: Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading

The Coen brothers' comedy about a former CIA analyst’s memoirs falling into the wrong hands stars Brad Pitt, George Clooney and John Malkovich, with roles written specially for them

Brad Pitt plays fitness instructor Chad, one of modern comedy’s great fools

Joel and Ethan Coen are incapable of making a bad film. Irrespective of genre and with a remarkable ability to avoid repetition, the filmmakers have consistently produced the goods from Blood Simple all the way through to Hail, Caesar!

One intriguing aspect of the brothers’ canon is the way they have tended to fluctuate between the kinds of dark thrillers favoured by the Academy and laugh-out-loud comedies that attract cult followings but minimal awards success. Indeed, it sometimes feels as though the Coens are deliberately alternating between the two: Burn After Reading (2008), sandwiched between No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man, might not tackle the weightier themes but is one of their most purely enjoyable efforts.

The cast, like that of the Coens’ most recent effort, is a veritable who’s who of regular collaborators and genuine A-listers. Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Richard Jenkins all had their roles written specifically with them in mind and there is as sense that the writers took great delight in forcing Hollywood royalty to slum it in a broad comedy populated almost exclusively with deeply idiotic characters.

The plot concerns an ousted CIA official (Malkovich) and his memoir, the pronunciation of which is a delight in and of itself. The files fall into the hands of two dim-witted gym employees (Pitt and McDormand) who sense this might be an opportunity to make a quick buck since they’re oblivious to the fact that the autobiography contains absolutely nothing of note. The result is a comedic tale of espionage where nobody learns anything and the pointlessness of it all is explicitly acknowledged in the latter stages.

This is an astute parody of paranoid political thrillers and the devil is in the detail. Carter Burwell’s neurotic score is a masterpiece of mounting tension irrespective of the actual events unfolding on screen and serves as an inspired spoof of didactic movie soundtracks. Pitt’s Chad, a gum-chewing fitness instructor, is one of modern comedy’s great fools while Malkovich shines as a man with the kinds of delusions of grandeur more normally associated with the great British sitcoms.

Like The Big Lebowski, the plot is less important than the dialogue, characterisation and jokes, quite possibly as a direct response to the preceding film. The world presented is one dominated by ignorant people convinced they’re extremely intelligent and, in this respect, Burn After Reading feels more relevant than ever in 2017.