Burn After Reading

A bumbling national security state, where blackly humorous incompetence doesn’t diminish a capacity for extreme violence, is parodied in this late Bush-era satire by Joel and Ethan Coen. Burn After Reading follows recently jobless CIA analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), whose misplaced memoirs are found by gym employees Linda and Chad (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) who mistake them for classified government documents and attempt to make a profit. Things predictably go awry in this absurd send-up of US spy culture, also starring George Clooney and Tilda Swinton. “For dark laughs and hurtling narrative momentum this spy caper is their best work since Fargo,” the Chicago Reader proclaimed.