Movie review: 'Burn After Reading'

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2 stars (out of four)

The dour espionage goof “Burn After Reading” offers a few laughs, most of them provided by Brad Pitt as a serenely clueless gym employee who really, really likes his iPod, and by David Rasche and J.K. Simmons as C.I.A. analysts who don’t know anything about anything. On screen, delusional  schmoes are more fun than smart people, and in the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen, the imperious former spook played by John Malkovich accuses his blackmailers, played by Pitt and Frances McDormand, of heading a “league of morons.” Washington, D.C., here is a town built on a swamp of stupid, and as in all Coen japes, stupid has at least a 40 percent chance of getting you killed in spectacularly violent fashion.

But the cosmic joke being played on the morons here isn’t much fun in the telling.

The disappointment of “Burn After Reading” has nothing to do with it being a less “serious” or “grown-up” project than the Coens’ previous one, last year’s “No Country for Old Men,” which won them a best  picture Oscar. “No Country” was no less dependent on grim comic irony than “Burn After Reading,” a daisy chain of chancy decisions leading to blood all over a bedroom closet wall. The disappointment here is simply a matter of limited surprise  and surprisingly meager wit.

The brothers are unlikely ever to make a slovenly or unpolished film. Each script they concoct boasts at least one (usually more) clever intersection of narratives or a turn of phrase you couldn’t get from any other contemporary filmmaker. In “Burn After Reading” one such phrase is “lactose reflux,” a condition George Clooney’s character claims to have, and the way he says it—this is at a party attended by the D.C. federal marshal’s mistress, played by a flame-haired, ferociously controlling Tilda Swinton—you can’t trust him. Only Richard Jenkins’ love for the McDormand character (he’s the manager of the suburban gym who can’t understand why she wants to spend thousands of dollars on plastic surgery) provides a little contrast for all the craven yutzes’ behavior.

 The blackmail plot hinges on a computer disk, which McDormand’s character, Linda Litzke, wants to sell to the Russians. It’s a ridiculous non-starter of a plan, and the movie never builds up much steam.   The cast is very good, and they’re ready to play, but the playground is designed in bloodlessly clever fashion. As photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki,  “Burn After Reading” looks like “Three Days of the Condor” or “The Good Shepherd” with a lot of bug-eyed muggers in it, working at one notch below their best abilities. Clooney remains as game as ever, but the way he and McDormand push the energy here, you feel the strain. Pitt, just floating through, comes off best. He doesn’t judge the moron he’s playing; he just is.

mjphillips@tribune.com

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