| Burn After Reading | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Joel Coen Ethan Coen |
| Written by | Joel Coen Ethan Coen |
| Produced by | Joel Coen Ethan Coen |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Emmanuel Lubezki |
| Edited by | Roderick Jaynes[a] |
| Music by | Carter Burwell |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Focus Features (International) Universal Pictures (United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Benelux and Spain) StudioCanal (France)[2] |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 96 minutes[3] |
| Countries | |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $37 million[2] |
| Box office | $163.8 million[2] |
Burn After Reading is a 2008black comedyespionage film written, produced, edited and directed byJoel and Ethan Coen.[5] It follows a recently joblessCIAanalyst, Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), whose misplaced memoirs are found by a pair of dimwitted gym employees (Frances McDormand andBrad Pitt). When they mistake the memoirs for classified government documents, they undergo a series of misadventures in an attempt to profit from their find. The film also starsGeorge Clooney as a womanizingU.S. Marshal;Tilda Swinton as Katie Cox, the wife of Osborne Cox;Richard Jenkins as the gym manager; andJ. K. Simmons as a CIA supervisor.
The film premiered on August 27, 2008, at theVenice Film Festival.[6] It was released in the United States on September 12, 2008, and in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2008. It performed well at the box office, grossing over $163 million from its $37 million budget.[2] Critical response was mostly positive, and the film received nominations at both theGolden Globes[7] andBritish Academy Film Awards.[8]
Faced with a demotion due to a drinking problem, Osborne Cox angrily quits his job as a CIA analyst and decides to write a memoir. Upon telling his wife Katie, she secretly files for divorce and continues an existing affair with Harry Pfarrer, a married U.S. Marshal with paranoid tendencies. At the instruction of her lawyer, Katie delivers a copy of her husband's digital financial records and other personal files, unknowingly including a rough draft of Osborne's memoir. The lawyer's assistant copies the files onto aCD-R, which she accidentally leaves on the locker room floor of Hardbodies, a local gym. The disc falls into the hands of personal trainer Chad Feldheimer and his coworker Linda Litzke, who mistakenly believe it contains sensitive government information.
Chad and Linda devise a plan to return the disc to Osborne for a reward as Linda is eager to raise money for cosmetic surgery. However, their inept efforts toblackmail Osborne only enrage him. Upon their failure to secure money from Osborne, Chad and Linda try to sell the disc to theRussian embassy, meeting with a Russian government official. Information on the meeting later makes it back to the CIA via a mole in the Russian embassy. Osborne's erratic behavior prompts Katie to change the locks on their house and to invite Harry to move in. Harry is a serial philanderer who incidentally becomes romantically involved with Linda after meeting her on a dating site.
Having falsely promised the Russians more files, Linda persuades Chad to sneak into the Cox house to steal files from Osborne's computer. Chad is discovered by Harry, who reflexively kills Chad with his firearm. Harry searches the body for clues, but finds an empty wallet and missing suit tags, a precaution Chad took on Linda's advice. Harry surmises from his lack of identifying features that Chad is a government agent. At CIA headquarters, Osborne's former supervisor Palmer DeBakey Smith and his superior learn that information from Osborne has been given to the Russian embassy. They are perplexed because the information is of no particular importance and the perpetrators' motive is unknown. To avoid involvement from theFBI because ofinterservice rivalry, the superior orders that Chad's death be covered up.
Following a skirmish, Harry realizes that he is being tailed by a divorce lawyer hired by his wife. Depressed, Harry meets with Linda, who is distressed over Chad's disappearance. Harry agrees to help find him, unaware that Chad is the man he killed. Linda returns to the embassy, believing that the Russians have abducted Chad, but they deny this. After they inform her the contents of the CD she has given them are worthless, she convinces the manager of Hardbodies, Ted (who has unrequited feelings for Linda), to help her by sneaking into the Cox household to gather more files.
Harry and Linda meet in a park, where Linda reveals the address where Chad went before he disappeared. Harry realizes that Chad is the man he shot and flees, convinced Linda is a spy. When Osborne breaks into Katie's house with a hatchet to retrieve personal belongings, he finds Ted in the basement; Osborne shoots him, chases him into the street, and kills him with the hatchet.
At CIA headquarters, Smith relates the events to his superior. A surveilling CIA officer who saw Osborne's highly conspicuous attack intervened and shot him, leaving him in a coma. Harry has been detained while trying to flee to Venezuela, a country with noextradition treaty with the U.S.; the superior orders that Harry be released and allowed to continue to Venezuela, rather than deal with the consequences of bringing him into custody. Linda has been captured but agrees to keep quiet if they will pay for her plastic surgery. The superior, bewildered by the litany of events, approves the payment and closes the file.
Working Title Films produced the film forFocus Features, which also has worldwide distribution rights.[9]Burn After Reading was the firstCoen brothers film not to useRoger Deakins as cinematographer sinceMiller's Crossing.Emmanuel Lubezki, four-timeAcademy Award-nominated cinematographer ofSleepy Hollow andChildren of Men, took over for Deakins,[10] who had already committed to shooting Sam Mendes'Revolutionary Road.[11]Mary Zophres served as costume designer, marking her eighth consecutive movie with the Coen brothers.[9]Carter Burwell, a composer who worked with the Coens in 11 previous films, created the score. Early in the production, Burwell and the Coens decided that the score should be emphatically percussive to match the deluded self-importance of the characters, and they noted the all-drum score for the political thrillerSeven Days in May. Joel Coen wanted the score to be "big and bombastic,... important sounding but absolutely meaningless."[12] Burwell wrote that a percussive score would help "avoid any emotional comment" and "would lend an air of sobriety, gravity, and bombast to the general silliness". TheBurn score ultimately made frequent use of JapaneseTaiko drums.[13]
Burn After Reading was the first original screenplay penned by Joel and Ethan Coen since their 2001 film,The Man Who Wasn't There.[14] Ethan Coen comparedBurn After Reading to theAllen Drurypolitical novelAdvise and Consent and called it "our version of aTony Scott/Jason Bourne kind of movie, without the explosions."[15] Joel Coen said that they intended to create a spy film because "we hadn't done one before",[16] but feels that the final result was more of a character-driven film than a spy story. Joel also said thatBurn After Reading was not meant to be a comment or satire on Washington.[12]
Parts of theBurn screenplay were written while the Coens were also writing their adaptation ofNo Country for Old Men.[12] The Coens created characters with actors George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Richard Jenkins in mind for the parts, and the script derived from the brothers' desire to include them in a "fun story."[17] Ethan Coen said that Pitt's character was partially inspired by a botched hair-coloring job from a commercial that Pitt had made.[18] Tilda Swinton, who was cast later than the other actors, was the only major actor whose character was not written specifically for her. The Coens struggled to develop a common filming schedule to accommodate the A-list cast.[19]
Production Weekly, an online entertainment-industry magazine, falsely reported in October 2006 thatBurn After Reading was a loose adaptation ofBurn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence, a memoir by formerU.S. Director of Central IntelligenceStansfield Turner.[20] The Coen brothers script had nothing to do with the Turner book; nevertheless, the rumor was not clarified until aLos Angeles Times article more than one year later.[17]
Principal photography took place aroundBrooklyn Heights, as the Coens wanted to stay in New York City to be with their families.[21] Other scenes were filmed inParamus, New Jersey,Westchester County, New York andWashington, D.C., particularly in theGeorgetown neighborhood.[5] Filming began on August 27, 2007, and was completed on October 30, 2007.[5] John Malkovich, appearing in his first Coen brothers film, said of the shooting, "The Coens are very delightful: smart, funny, very specific about what they want but not overly controlling, as some people can be."[22]
The film opened theVenice Film Festival in August 2008.[23]
The Coen brothers said idiocy was a major central theme ofBurn After Reading; Joel said he and his brother have "a long history of writing parts for idiotic characters"[23] and described Clooney and Pitt's characters as "dueling idiots."[18]Burn After Reading is the third of four Coen brothers films with Clooney (O Brother, Where Art Thou?,Intolerable Cruelty and, later,Hail, Caesar!), who acknowledged that he usually plays a fool in their movies: "I've done three films with them and they call it my trilogy of idiots."[23] Joel said after the last scene was shot, "George said: 'OK, I've played my last idiot!' So I guess he won't be working with us again."[24]
Pitt, who plays a particularly unintelligent character, said of his role, "After reading the part, which they said was hand-written for myself, I was not sure if I should be flattered or insulted."[23] Pitt also said when he was shown the script, he told the Coens he did not know how to play the part because the character was such an idiot: "There was a pause, and then Joel goes...'You'll be fine'."[21]
During a fall movie preview,Entertainment Weekly wrote that Malkovich "easily racks up the most laughs"[25] among the cast as the foul-mouthed and short-tempered ex-CIA man. The first scene Malkovich performed was a phone call in which he shouts several obscenities at Pitt and McDormand. But Malkovich could not be on thesound stage for the call because he was rehearsing a play, so he called in the lines from his apartment inParis. Regarding the scene, Malkovich said, "It was really late at night and I was screaming at the top of my lungs. God knows what the neighbors thought."[25] Swinton plays Malkovich's wife who engages in anaffair with Clooney, although the two characters do not get along well. Clooney's and Swinton's characters also had a poor relationship in their previous film together,Michael Clayton, prompting Clooney to say to Swinton at the end of a shoot, "Well, maybe one day we'll get to make a film together when we say one nice thing to each other."[25] Swinton said of the dynamic, "I'm very happy to shout at him on screen. It's great fun."[5]
Swinton describedBurn After Reading as "a kind of monster caper movie"[24] and said of the characters, "All of us are monsters – like, true monsters. It's ridiculous."[24] She also said, "I think there is something random at the heart of this one. On the one hand, it really is bleak and scary. On the other, it is really funny. ... It's the whatever-ness of it. You feel that at any minute of any day in any town, this could happen."[15] Malkovich said of the characters, "No one in this film is very good. They're either slightly emotional or mentally defective. Quirky, self-aggrandizing, scheming."[22] Pitt said the cast did little ad-libbing because the script was so tightly written and wove so many overlapping stories together.[16] Veteran actorRichard Jenkins said the Coen brothers asked him if he could lose weight for his role as the gym manager, to which Jenkins jokingly replied, "I'm a 60-year-old man, not Brad Pitt. My body isn't going to change."[26]
Joel Coen said the sex machine built by Clooney's character was inspired by a machine he once saw akey grip build, and by another machine he saw in theMuseum of Sex in New York City.[12]
Burn After Reading was released onRegion 1DVD andBlu-ray disc on December 21, 2008. The Region 2 version was released on February 9, 2009. The Blu-ray contains three bonus features, including behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with cast and crew.[27]
In its opening weekend, the film grossed $19.1 million from 2,651 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking number one at the box office.[28] It went on to gross $60.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $103.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $163.7 million worldwide.[2]
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 78% based on 248 reviews, and an average rating of 6.90/10. The website's critical consensus states, "WithBurn After Reading, the Coen Brothers have crafted another clever comedy/thriller with an outlandish plot and memorable characters."[29]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[30]
The Times, which gave the film four out of five stars, compared it to the Coen filmsRaising Arizona andFargo in its "savagely comic taste for creative violence and a slightly mocking eye for detail."[14] The review said that the attention to detail was so impeccable that "the Coens can even raise a laugh with something as simple as a well-placed photograph ofVladimir Putin",[14] and complimentedCarter Burwell's musical score, which it described as "the most paranoid piece of film music sinceQuincy Jones's neurotic soundtrack forThe Anderson Tapes."[14]
Andrew Pulver, film reviewer forThe Guardian, awarded the film four out of five stars, calling it "a tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy that couldn't be in bigger contrast to the Coens' last film, the bloodsoaked, broodingNo Country for Old Men."[31] Pulver said that the film "may also go down as arguably the Coens' happiest engagement with the demands of the HollywoodA-list."[31]
The Hollywood Reporter reviewer Kirk Honeycutt complimented the actors for making fun of their screen personae, and said that the Coen brothers "... have taken some of cinema's top and most expensive actors and chucked them intoLooney Tunes roles in a thriller."[32] Honeycutt also said "it takes awhile to adjust to the rhythms and subversive humor ofBurn because this is really an anti-spy thriller in which nothing is at stake, no one acts with intelligence and everything ends badly."[32]
Todd McCarthy ofVariety wrote a strongly negative review, saying that the film "tries to mate sex farce with a satire of a paranoid political thriller, with arch and ungainly results."[33] McCarthy said the talented cast was forced to act like cartoon characters, described Carter Burwell's score as "uncustomarily overbearing"[33] and said the dialogue is "dialed up to an almost grotesquely exaggerated extent, making for a film that feels misjudged from the opening scene and thereafter only occasionally hits the right note."
Time film criticRichard Corliss wrote that he did not understand what the Coen brothers were attempting with the film: "I have the sinking feeling I've madeBurn After Reading sound funnier than it is. The movie's glacial affectlessness, its remove from all these subpar schemers, left me cold and perplexed."[34]
David Denby ofThe New Yorker said that the film had several funny scenes, but that they "are stifled by a farce plot so bleak and unfunny that it freezes your responses after about forty-five minutes."[35] Denby criticized the film's pattern of violence in which innocent people die quickly and the guilty go unpunished. "These people don't mean much to [the Coen brothers]; it's hardly a surprise that they don't mean much to us, either. ... Even black comedy requires that the filmmakers love someone, and the mock cruelties inBurn After Reading come off as a case of terminal misanthropy."[35]
Leah Rozen ofPeople said that the characters' "unrelenting dumbness and dim-witted behavior is at first amusing and enjoyable but eventually grows wearing."[36] But Rozen said that the performances are a redeeming factor, especially that of Pitt, whom she described as a standout who "manages simultaneously to be delightfully broad and smartly nuanced."[36]
Le Monde noticed the film's "particularly bitter image of the U.S. The alliance of political incompetence (the CIA), the cult of appearance (the gym club) and vulgar stupidity (everyone) is the target of a settling of scores" where the comedy "sprouts from a well of bitterness."[37]
Almost a decade later,The New Republic senior editorJeet Heer argued that the film was "singularly prophetic of theTrump era" anticipating "theTrump campaign's collusion withRussian operatives" and "the wider culture of deceit that madeDonald Trump's rise possible. More than just a satire on espionage, the movie is scathing critique of modern America as a superficial,post-political society where cheating of all sorts comes all too easily....The most disturbing thing aboutBurn After Reading, though, is how it resembles every day in Trump'sWashington, where the line between blundering idiocy and malevolent conspiracy is increasingly blurred."[38]
In July 2025, it was one of the films voted for the "Readers' Choice" edition ofThe New York Times' list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century," finishing at number 276.[39]
TheNational Board of Review namedBurn After Reading in its list of the Top 10 Movies of 2008. Noel Murray ofThe A.V. Club named it the second-best film of 2008,[40]Empire magazine named it the third-best film of 2008,[40] andOwen Gleiberman ofEntertainment Weekly named it the seventh-best film of 2008.[40]
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