Burn After Reading

The movie I screened was called Burn After Reading by The Cohen Brothers. The film was about a C.I.A. agent that writes his memoirs after being fired from his job only to have it fall into the hands of two very eccentric gym employees out to exploit their findings. The storyline sounded weak to me, but I went and saw it anyway. Big Mistake. This film had no heart. There was absolutely no emotional arc. It was more or less a mess of events meshed together around one memoir. It was obviously a satire of sorts, but it was also a waste of ten dollars.

A few points:
The story was told from a couple of points of view. There were multiple protagonists and it was hard to identify the antagonist. There was Linda Litzske, the self-conscious gym employee that only wants to have multiple cosmetic surgeries but has just had her insurance denied; Chad, a happy go lucky jock of sorts. He is also a gym employee. Osborne, who was played by John Malchovich, the C.I.A. agent with the memoirs that were stolen by his wife, the cold and stuck up pediatrician Katie who has plans to wipe out his accounts and leave him for George Clooney's character Harry.

The story begins with Osborne being fired from his job. When he tries to explain to his wife that he was fired from his job, all she can talk about is picking up cheez-itz. From there we find out that Harry and Katie are having an affair while the two of them are both married. Her plans are revealed that she wants to leave Osbourne for Harry after he wiping out all of his accounts leaving him penniless.

Then we meet Linda Litzke, the self-conscious Hard Bodies gym employee who has the same lawyer as Katie. He advises her to get the surgeries if it'll make her feel better about herself. I started to wonder, why is a lawyer telling his client to get surgery? I was a little confused as to who he was: A therapist or a lawyer.

The rest of the film was slow. There wasn't much going on except that Chad, Brad Pitt's character gets killed for absolutely no reason after hiding out in Osbourne's closet in hopes of finding out more information about him. He and Linda Litzke got their hands on his memoirs after a disk containing the information was found at their job, The Hardbodies Gym.

After Harry kills Chad, the story basically takes a downward spiral from there. Events were meshed together, there were no reveals about the connection between Harry killing Chad and his new concubine Linda looking for him, how the C.I.A and Harry were connected in the first place was never revealed so that the audience was just left confused, dumbfounded and without the two hours of their lives they just wasted.