Cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich

Director: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

The Coen Brothers wrote the screenplay of Burn After Reading while working on the screenplay of their award-winning No Country For Old Men. That they could alternate between the two, vastly different films is a testament to what the brothers are capable of, and they almost pull it off here again. Burn After Reading is a comedy that makes fun of almost everything, reminding you that almost none of it is laughing matter.

Consider the Cast

• A CIA expert on the Balkans, Osborne Cox (Malkovich), shunted out of the Agency as “he has a drinking problem”. He immediately decides to write a tell-all memoir, which lies thrown about the house, and then can’t rouse himself beyond the first few lines.

• His obviously successful and no-nonsense paediatrician wife, Katie (Swinton). She is used to getting her own way, whether it is with unsuspecting children or suspicious adults.

• Her lover Harry (Clooney), a federal marshal who carries a gun that he has never fired, which helps him a long way with the ladies. He is not bright enough to let discretion come in the way of his dalliances, but dollops of charm ensure that others overlook it and he never sees it.

• Harry’s writer wife Sandy, charming but not as gullible as we presume.

• One of Harry’s conquests, Linda (McDormand), who works at a gym and who has decided she won’t stop at anything — including walking into the Russian Embassy— for four cosmetic surgeries that will give her a new body and a new life.

... contd.