Burn After Reading

In Joel and Ethan Coen's loopy latest film, a dowdy health-club employee (Frances McDormand) enters into a blackmail scheme with a dimwitted coworker (Brad Pitt) when the latter stumbles upon a computer disc lost by a disgruntled CIA analyst (John Malkovich) whose bitchy wife (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with a womanizing Treasury agent (George Clooney)—hang in there, full circle coming—who's bedding the health-club worker in his spare time. The resulting chaos will eventually impact the health-club manager (Richard Jenkins), and a pair of CIA bureaucrats (J.K. Simmons and David Rasche) who think they might be responsible for the leak. Burn After Reading will remind many viewers of those old Laurel and Hardy comedies in which a series of minor, insignificant affronts provoke responses of steadily escalating severity, until all hell hilariously breaks loose—only this is much darker. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “DC Insiders Run Amuck” behind-the-scenes featurette (13 min.), a “Finding the Burn” making-of featurette, “Welcome Back George” on costar Clooney's collaborations with filmmakers Ethan and Joel Coen (3 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a characteristically small extras package for a Coen Brothers film.] (E. Hulse)