Beltway Bumblers

The Coen brothers' dark comedy--almost redundant, I know--Burn After Reading got not so much love in September from critics (including our own), and only one award nomination this month, from those mysterious folks at the Golden Globes. Coming to DVD next Tuesday, the movie made me laugh, and quit a bit. (My dissent here.) If you want full, psychologically rounded characters, look elsewhere. The Coen universe amounts to a parade of fools who deserve violent deaths, and usually receive them. Though the Minnesota-born brothers provide no commentary, as usual, some of the DVD extras on this single-disc package provide insight into their methods, and why A-list talent (like Tilda Swinton, pictured above) flock to participate in their projects, even if that means possible demise by wood chipper or hatchet.
Three short featurettes amount to a whopping 20 minutes of bonus material. I guess Brad Pitt was busy off filming The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, since he's absent. But regular Coen cut-up George Clooney, who plays a none-too-smart DC lothario in the picture, lends his cheery presence. Having worked with the brothers before on O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty, he says they always give their stars liberty on the set. But even after a big shot like him gets to do a take as he likes, following the Coens' cutting-room decisions, "You never get to do it your way." He says it with a smile, but still. What he and the other cast members say they like, however, is the Coens' pre-shoot perfectionism. They don't rewrite on the set or worry about, you know, motivation.

Joel Coen's wife Fraces McDormand, Oscar winner for Fargo, says of the film, "It's about middle-aged people" She's a gym worker obsessed with maintaining her body. And if that means plastic surgery and blackmail of supposed CIA secrets (with airheaded fellow gym rat Pitt), so be it. Meanwhile, Clooney's character is a compulsive runner, his hair touched gray to make him look more middle aged. And his wife turns out to be also straying in mid-life, just as he does with Tilda Swinton.

All these clueless cats cross paths with government spooks (peevish John Malkovich among them), giving Burn has the feel of a '70s espionage thriller. But, says Ethan Coen, "It's like a Tony Scott-Bourne Identity type movie...without the explosions." Well, there are certainly explosions of stupidity. Clooney starts suave, then gradually reveals himself to be a bumbler, pervert, and unworthy adulterer for the impatient, high-IQ Swinton. (Her withering expression is like that of a mantis, about to bite off her lover's head.) Pitt is a pure, puppyish simpleton, almost endearingly devoted to McDormand (who also inspires the love of their exasperated boss, the always fine Richard Jenkins).

Provided you're willing to laugh at midlife follies, and laugh at our federal intelligence-gathering apparatus (led by the peerless J.K. Simmons, aka Juno's dad), Burn is a very funny picture. Not psychological, not flesh-and-blood realism, but not so mean-spirited as some would suggest. At least one character--no spoilers as to which--receives a just dessert, no punishment, no harm...but the Coens characteristically leave that (partial) happy ending off camera. So it's left to us to imagine that person on a beach somewhere, laughing along with us at the dimwits in our nation's capitol.

Burn After Reading, $29.98. Universal-Focus. On DVD Sun., Dec. 21.