Delayed Reaction: Burn After Reading

The Pitch: An anti-spy dark comedy with A-list stars who should be "too big" to play these roles.

Technically, I've seen this movie before, back when it was in theaters in 2008. Up to this point, I've had a pretty hard line on only writing Reactions only for movies that are new to me. That much is implied by calling them 'reactions' rather than 'reviews'. With the loss of my Club 50 project though and my ability to appreciate movies a second or third time in a different way these days, I feel fine including some rewatches.

Burn After Reading has been at the top of my rewatch list for a while. I saw it back in 2008 before I had any kind of appreciation for the Coen brothers. I wasn't prepared for how dark it would be or how silly. Brad Pitt and George Clooney are complete goofballs. Frances McDormand is gloriously oblivious. John Malkovich is a raw nerve in a hilarious way. All the people are awful, or if they aren't, they are just sad-sacks, like Richard Jenkins. Nothing of significance is ever discussed. It's all just a series of miscommunications, both willful and accidental, that go horribly awry. That's pretty great once you get used to it.

What seals it for me and demanded that I see the movie again is the end. The scene when Palmer (David Rasche) is explaining the events to his CIA director (J.K. Simmons) is wonderful. When I originally saw it in theaters, that became one of my favorite movie theater experiences ever. The movie hadn't really connected with the audience before that, but then Racsche starts recapping all the crazy things that have happened. The more perplexed Simmons got and the more we realize just far this spun out of control, the harder the audience laughed. It's one of the top two slow-build laughs I've ever been part of in a theater. Over the years, I'm sure I've built up the legend of the experience in my mind to be bigger than it actually was (I'm pretty sure there was a teen wolf there), but I don't care. I'd rather remember it as the cacophony of thunderous laughter that I recall rather than the half-full theater with a couple people picking up a the joke slowly that it probably was Besides, that really is a great scene. The Coens are the greatest at making you sit back and wonder "what was the point of any of that?"

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend