Burn After Reading (2008)

Intelligence is relative.

It’s basically a spook movie with lots of stupidly acting characters and it’s for sure that you will be laughing your guts out for the whole length of the movie. There are some funny action scenes too. Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), a secret agent gets fired at the start of the movie. His wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton) is in an affair with a treasury guy, Harry Pferrer (George Clooney) and is also planning to leave him. Being suggested by the divorce lawyer to secure her financial settlement with Cox, his wife steals top notch security information from his home computer. Eventually the CD with the secret stuff is lost from the possesion of the secretary of the divorce lawyer. Lynda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), two gym instructors get hand of the CD. Lynda, who is in need of money for her cosmetic surgery takes the matter seriously. They try to blackmail Cox with the CD for money but Chad gets a blow on his nose by Cox. Then they try to sell the information to the Russians. As the Agency gets the wind of this, everyone gets to being followed by other spooks. The Russians demands more from Lynda and Chad and so, Chad goes to Cox’s house to steal some more secret stuff. Harry, the treasury guy turns up there to change. He finds Chad in the closet, gets scraed and shot him in head. He can’t find any identity on Chad, so he dumps the body in the river. Meanwhile, through a dating service Lynda gets a gate with Harry. Lynda tells Harry about Chad disappearing. Harry wants to know more and goes crazy after finding out that he himself shot Chad, Lynda’s associate. Lynda convinces another guy at the gym to steal some more stuff from Cox’s computer. So this guy Ted (Richard Jenkins) went over to Cox’s house while Cox returns to his wife’s “new home” with an axe. He finds out Ted and shot and slaughtered him on the street in broad daylight. At last the case officer describes the whole incident as “hard to say” when his supervisor asks him that what was this all about.

This movie is well worth watching. There’s suspense, confusion, comedy, romance, middle-age crisis and a little action too. Jam packed it is, that’s what I say.

Buy Burn After Reading at Amazon.com.

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