Burn After Reading

Rating:

* * *

Verdict:

Black comedy's farce elements are overwhelmed by the absence of a single likeable character.

The Coen brothers have made so many wonderful films that it's easy to forget they've made some stinkers too:

The Hudsucker Proxy

didn't get mentioned in the recent obituaries for Paul Newman, who starred in it, and for good reason;

Intolerable Cruelty

wired together George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, threw the switch and generated no spark at all.

The Coens' new film isn't in that miserable league, and it's tempting to see it as the boys having a bit of fun after the haunting tragic gravity of the Oscar-winning

No Country For Old Men

. But, the Coens being the Coens, their bit of fun adds up to a comedy of nihilism so extreme that pleasure takes a back seat.

There's nobody in this movie with the goofy charm of Jeff Bridges' Dude in

The Big Lebowski

, say, or McDormand's pregnant cop in Fargo. Everybody's so thoroughly self-obsessed and unlikeable that the film's major interest resides in watching such big stars incarnating such small people.

Set in a Washington so sterile that even the sunshine seems fluorescent, it is a comedy of coincidences and mistaken intentions which plays like farce. Malkovich plays a CIA analyst whose intelligence does not extend to the knowledge that his wife (Swinton) is having an affair with an empty-headed narcissistic federal marshal (Clooney).

Incensed after his drinking earns him a demotion, he begins work on tell-all memoirs but a CD of a draft falls into the hands of two workers (McDormand and Pitt) at a suburban gym, who mistake it for top secret spy files and resolve to ransom them.

Chaos ensues and the results are far from predictable - the sudden death of one character comes as a hell of a shock - but the film is all pace and no substance. When, at one point, the CIA chief (the reliable Simmons, who played Juno's father in

Juno

) says to an underling "Report back to me when it makes sense," we know what he's talking about.

The talent on show means there's no shortage of polish and the characterisations (particularly Jenkins as McDormand's lovelorn co-worker and Pitt, as a male bimbo gym bunny  who would make a mushroom look intelligent) are fun. But the only thing that protects the film from the charge that it is cynical and empty is that it was doubtless meant to be.

Peter Calder

Cast:

George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, J K. Simmons

Directors:

Ethan and Joel Coen

Running time:

96 mins

Rating:

R16 (violence, offensive language, sex scenes)

Screening:

Hoyts, Rialto, Skycity