“Intelligence is relative.”
The Coen Brothers love their humor with bumbling protagonists (see “O’ Brother Where Art Though’), but in recent years, their films with dim-witted boobs haven’t been their best material (see “The Lady Killers” and “Intolerable Cruelty,” though we will argue to no end that these films are still better than your average film, just slightly sub-par from the Coens). Regardless, the producer-director writing pair have seemingly returned to this genre with “Burn After Reading,” a dark CIA spy comedy starring Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, and John Malkovich (among many other talented actors they’re fond of using).
The small synopsis is: a disk containing the memoirs of a cast out CIA agent (Malkovich) ends up in the hands of two unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to sell it (Pitt, McDormand) and exploit it for its potential worth. Will it be more ‘Lebowski’ than ‘Cruelty’? It definitely feels like it’s closer in tone to the blundering mood of t he latter, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be great. Either way, the film is set to hit theaters on September 12, 2008. Apple has the high-def versions of the trailer if you’re interested.