Get ready to see George Clooney and Brad Pitt in a different light in the new comedy-thriller Burn After Reading. It marks their next film together since the Ocean’s series and has likewise achieved the No. 1 slot in the US weekend box-office charts.
In Burn After Reading, analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) arrives for a top-secret-meeting at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Arlington, Virginia. Unfortunately for Cox, the secret is soon out: He is being ousted. Cox does not take the news particularly well and returns to his Georgetown home to work on his memoirs and his drinking, not necessarily in that order. His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is dismayed, though not particularly surprised; she is already well into an illicit affair with Harry Pfarrer (Clooney), a married federal marshal, and sets about making plans to leave Cox for Harry.
Elsewhere in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, and seemingly worlds apart, Hardbodies Fitness Centers employee Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) can barely concentrate on her work. She is consumed with her life plan for extensive cosmetic surgery, and confides her mission to can-do colleague Chad Feldheimer (Pitt). Linda is all but oblivious to the fact that the gym’s manager Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins) pines for her even as she arranges dates via the Internet with other men.
When a computer disc containing material for the CIA analyst’s memoirs accidentally falls into the hands of Linda and Chad, the duo are intent on exploiting their find. As Ted frets, “No good can come of this,” events spiral out of everyone’s and anyone’s control, in a cascading series of darkly hilarious encounters.
Burn After Reading is a comedy thriller from award-winning writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen. The Coen Brothers mix and match strains of comedic DNA — screwball comedy, satire, sex farce — to weave a tale of an ousted CIA analyst, two D.C. gym employees, and a lost computer disc that may contain highly sensitive material.
JK Simmons and Elizabeth Marvel are also part of the ensemble cast.
Burn After Reading is now showing in theaters.