I don’t know if I should put a SPOILER ALLERT warning on top of this review, because I have no idea where this review is going. Yes, it is a spoiler by the way. It won’t make a big difference though, because there is really no story, so there’s nothing to be spoiled! I really don’t know what to say other than, for starters, this is surely one wicked movie!

If you’re wondering about the name, you’ll keep wondering. I actually watched the movie, and I have no freakin’ clue what it has to do with the movie. Like everything else (continue reading), it has nothing to do with anything anywhere. The poster? Fits the movie, big stars looking and being weird!

From the blend, it looks great… three Oscar-winning stars (George Clooney, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton), two Oscar-nominated co-stars (Brad Pitt and John Malkovich), and Oscar-winning writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen, straight from last spring’s Academy triumph with No Country for Old Men.

Big movie stars act like damn morons in this movie! Sure its fun to watch those stars act like fools in a movie like this one, but if you’re looking for a story, a happy ending, a sad ending, ANY ENDING AT ALL, or any sort of human connection, you have certainly paid 30LE to watch the wrong movie.

Don’t get me wrong, I had fun watching the movie. Its a big mind twister. But usually, mind twisters have a story so complicated it makes u wonder. This one, on the other hand, makes you wonder… what the hell is all the fuss about!

I felt the need to comment on the synopsis before getting on with the review… my comments are in bold sqaure brackets…

Burn After Reading, a comedy thriller [huh!!] from Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, Fargo, The Big Lebowski), is world-premiering as the opening-night film of the 2008 Venice International Film Festival. [I wonder how that went!]

At the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Arlington, Va., analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) arrives for a top-secret meeting. Unfortunately for Cox, the secret is soon out: he is being ousted. Cox does not take the news particularly well [yeah, he ends up saying the word Fuck more than 15 times in 2 minutes] and returns to his Georgetown home to work on his memoirs and his drinking, not necessarily in that order. His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is dismayed, though not particularly surprised; she is already well into an illicit affair with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a married federal marshal, and sets about making plans to leave Cox for Harry. [If you're planning to watch the movie, take this from me, its all about the cheese Katie asked for and Ozzy didn't get - just kidding...]

Elsewhere in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, and seemingly worlds apart, Hardbodies Fitness Centers employee Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) can barely concentrate on her work. She is consumed with her life plan for extensive cosmetic surgery, and confides her mission to can-do colleague Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) [who also says the word shit between every 2 other words]. Linda is all but oblivious to the fact that the gym’s manager Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins) pines for her [badly, I think he was in love with her] even as she arranges dates via the Internet with other men.

When a computer disc containing material for the CIA analyst’s memoirs [actually its just his stupid household financial shit, nothing important.] accidentally falls into the hands of Linda and Chad, the duo are intent on exploiting their find. As Ted frets, “No good can come of this,” events spiral out of everyone’s and anyone’s control [thats the confusion I'm talking about... I think!! :S ], in a cascading series of darkly hilarious encounters.” [darkly HILARIOUS!! It was funny, but in no way hilarious!!]

So what happened? You get the feelling that you don’t know whats happening. What is the fuss about? The disc? Maybe. The cheese? Who knows! Everyone in the cast is sleeping with everyone else, 3 different stories are connected in a weird way, but the connection is in no way useful to the viewer, and it doesn’t serve the story at all…

Adultery, divorce, blackmail, treason, betrayal, Russians, breaking and entering and an extremely bizarre home-made sex toy are the order of the day. This may make it sound as if something important is at stake, but it ISN’T. No actual national secrets — just a disc with what two characters are convinced is highly classified material, but turns out to be something far less momentous. And since every spouse cheats and pursues or contemplates divorce, there’s not much at stake there either. Nothing in this movie is important AT ALL!

People are killed in weird ways. Yeah if you’re wondering, most of the cast died. How or why… NO CLUE! Investigation? Nope, just throw the bodies away… WTF! I am trying to narrate the story, and you’ll probably find other reviews that will, well those people had the time and effort to put this movie together, think about it, and write a review. I can’t, I simply can’t! It has strange meaningless twists, and things that appear to happen for no reason whatsoever!

The Coens have given all their lead characters absurd quirks. Harry is obsessed with potential food allergies and household flooring; Linda is fixated on body-image issues; Chad loses himself in iPod-accompanied aerobics; and Osborne seems awfully rash for a man in intelligence. The directors encourage their stars to play it broad, and they all paint the cartoons in loud colors. Clooney and McDormand have long displayed a knack for comedy, but the surprises here are Pitt, playing amusingly against his sex-symbol image, and Malkovich, who turns in the most consistently funny performance as an affronted egomaniac.

The Coen brothers definately had something in mind, and I’m still trying to figure out what it is. I feel that this is a really meaningless review, and I’m happy, becuase it fits the movie perfectly!

Bottom line, if you’re really free, or on a first date and need a movie to make fun of, or picked this out of 6 other movies at a theater for no apparent reason, or the three combined… Then go watch this movie. It’ll crack you up, make you think, go “WTF is this!”, crack you up again, give you a very weird feeling when it suddenly ends and you figure that its time to leave the theatre (if you understand it – at least I did), and its nothing you will expect.

I appreciate it, I’m not really sure if I like it, its a Coen fan must-see… But I definately don’t regret watching it at all…

I’d give this movie 7/10 on my scale (10/10 on the OMFG WTF THIS IS WEIRD! scale.)

Check out these quotes from the movie, and TRY to look for a relation. The result will be… NOTHING!

(Its over now. You can go home!)