Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading is a very interesting and hilarious take on the government agencies that protect our country. The film combines humor, drama and surprise and creates a spiraling world of building disaster, only to cumulate at the very end of the film. While the story is unique and different, the characters were the most interesting aspect to me in this film. It wasn’t only the way the characters were written but it was the actors who played the characters that impressed me the most. It seemed that two actors (Brad Pitt, George Clooney) broke their usual mold as actors and took a role that was unlike any other. Brad Pitt was by far my favorite character in the film because of the uniqueness and likeability of his character. I’ve never seen him play that type of role and just the way he played it was hilarious. I simply loved him in the film and wanted to be his friend. The only character that I felt didn’t stretch out of their comfort zone was John Malkovich. He usually always plays the crazy insane guy and in this film it was no different. Aesthetically, the film struck me as a beautifully shot, but not the best I’ve ever seen. There were a couple of scenes where I stepped out of the story and said to myself “wow, that’s a beautiful shot” but there were others that were simply shot to par. The shots, however, I felt flowed with the mood of the story and made a more cohesive product. The Cohen Brothers have a high reputation to hold with their films, and I felt this film did not disappoint.