Burn After Reading (2008)
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Reviews Counted: 225
Fresh: 176 | Rotten: 49
With Burn After Reading, the Coen Brothers have crafted another clever comedy/thriller with an outlandish plot and memorable characters.
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Critic Reviews: 47
Fresh: 30 | Rotten: 17
With Burn After Reading, the Coen Brothers have crafted another clever comedy/thriller with an outlandish plot and memorable characters.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 182,648
Movie Info
Joel and Ethan Coen's jet-black comedy Burn After Reading begins with CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) losing his job. This prompts his long-suffering, unfaithful wife (Tilda Swinton) to consult a lawyer about divorcing him. Osborne decides to write a book about his exploits, but an early draft of his work ends up lost at a gym where it's found by the dim-witted Chad (Brad Pitt, and the plastic-surgery obsessed Linda (Frances McDormand). They decide to blackmail Osborne in order to help
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Cast
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George Clooney
Harry Pfarrer -
Frances McDormand
Linda Litzke -
John Malkovich
Osborne Cox -
Tilda Swinton
Katie Cox -
Brad Pitt
Chad Feldheimer -
Richard Jenkins
Ted Treffon -
Elizabeth Marvel
Sandy Pfarrer -
David Rasche
CIA Officer -
J.K. Simmons
CIA Superior -
Jeffrey DeMunn
Cosmetic Surgeon -
Michael Countryman
Alan -
Olek Krupa
Krapotkin -
Dermot Mulroney
Star of 'Coming Up D... -
Richard Poe
Stretching Gym Patro... -
J.R. Horne
Divorce Lawyer -
Kevin Sussman
Tuchman Marsh Man -
Armand Schultz
Olson -
Pun Bandhu
Party Guest -
Hamilton Clancy
Peck -
Karla Mosley
Party Guest
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Burn After Reading Trailer & Photos
All Critics (226) | Top Critics (47) | Fresh (176) | Rotten (49) | DVD (19)
These are functioning morons, they walk and work among us. And they are brilliant and funny and in spite of the screwball-comedy nature of the story, they are completely believable.
Top Critic, Frances McDormand might get nominated for an Academy Award in a supporting role. She was great.
The Coens are loopy stylists, and it's often amusing to watch this comedy of errors unfold. But after a masterpiece like No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading is classified as disposable.
For fans of the Coens... it suggests, especially on the heels of No Country for Old Men, that they have rediscovered their cinematic vision after several lean years.
On screen, delusional schmoes are more fun than smart people, and in the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen, the imperious former spook played by John Malkovich accuses his blackmailers...of heading a league of morons.
Burn After Reading is a piffle, but it's a savagely amusing one.
A comedy so stupid, it doesn't realise it's a comedy. If intelligence is relative, then ignorance is bliss.
A quirky tale of lust, greed, vanity, idiocy and ineptitude that spreads its giggly ripples through the bureaucratic buildings and leafy suburbs of Washington, D.C.
A month from now you'll have forgotten all about it.
Coen fans will also enjoy their distinct brand of whip-cracking dialogue, which is almost musical in its rhythms.
Sure Burn After Reading is disjointed, fragmented and frustrated. But that's the point.
Gratuitous stuff, flat and desperate
It's a just-for-funsies caper, and the Coen brothers seem to revel in it, helped along by an impressive cast that gleefully follows their lead.
Fails to live up to the high expectations involuntarily set by such reputable talent.
a quirky, delicious comedy with an A-list cast clearly enjoying every moment of their screen time
Please send Get Well cards to the Coen Brothers. After last year's No Country for Old Men, for which they won the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year, Joel and Ethan Coen have had a relapse. Their new offering Burn After Reading is reminiscen
A bunch of pieces in search of a puzzle.
Unlikable characters who do stupid things.
Burn Before Watching.
Una disparatada comedia que le toma el pelo a la (des)inteligencia norteamericana, de la mano de un puñado de personajes absurdos animados por un estupendo elenco.
Influenciados pelos mesmos clichês que comprometem tantas produções do estilo, os próprios personagens de Queime Depois de Ler parecem não saber diferenciá-los da realidade.
Showcases a pitch-black comic sensibility that will either attract or repel moviegoers.
All in all though, fun times. I look forward to revisiting it again in the future, like most Coen bros movies.
Tries to be "The Big Lebowski" of the War on Terror.
Burn After Reading is part spy spoof and part rumination of middle-aged loneliness, which goes a long way to explain why its elements never cohere.
Even though Burn After Reading is often funny, it rarely achieves either the hilarity of Intolerable Cruelty or the iconic goofiness of The Big Lebowski.
Audience Reviews for Burn After Reading
Super Reviewer
The Coen Brother's have had a hilarious line of quirky, zany comedies that have accompanied their darker, more violent films throughout their film making history, and Burn After Reading is basically a hybrid of the two in the same way that Fargo is. It's ruthless, and blackly comic at the same, and for my money it's one of their best. The key to what makes this film work is the cast and the direction more than anything else. The Coen's know how to make clever comedies out of any situation, and no matter how absurd the cleverly interlocking narrative gets they find a way to make it work. The direction and timing of the cast is absolutely perfect and the performances all around are fantastic, you can easily forgive the film for being too self aware of it's stupidity as a result. With a script filled with wit, and an unconventional storyline that gives laughs at every opportunity ,you completely forget about it's various flaws. It's an intelligent knockabout comedy, and personally I think it was one of the best comedies of 2008. It's very well put together, and I honestly can't remember laughing as nearly as much times as I did in the company of Burn After Reading at any film in a very long time. It is an absolutely hilarious comedy and to it's benefit manages to give us plenty of thrills, even in the exact same moments where it serves up good humour. However throughout the film you do get a sense that none of the events that take place are in any way consequential, for some people that has proven to be it's downfall, but truthfully, for me anyway, a lot of the Coen's funniest pieces of work aren't. In the case of Burn After Reading it gives you everything that the action thriller premise would suggest you would get, and gives you that rather than just using the set up as an excuse to execute the witticisms. The inspired gags, the quirkiness of the plot, and the various characters are infinitely memorable, deem it extremely satisfying, and effortlessly manages to shoot the spy conspiracy thriller genre to a whole new whimsical level of wonderfully offbeat hilarity.
Super Reviewer
Movies Like Burn After Reading
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- CIA Superior: What do we learn, Palmer?
- Chad Feldheimer: I dont know sir.
- CIA Superior: I don't fucking know either.
- Chad Feldheimer: I guess we learned, not to do it again.
- Chad Feldheimer: Yes sir.
- Chad Feldheimer: I'm fucked if I know what we did.
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- Chad Feldheimer: I am very surprised that he did not give us that reward!
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- Chad Feldheimer: Secure your shit.
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- Linda Litzke: Dribble? Dribble?
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- Linda Litzke: Organs?
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- Chad Feldheimer: You think that's a Schwinn?
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Foreign Titles
- Wer verbrennt sich hier die Finger? (DE)
- Quémese después de leerse (ES)
