When I saw it in its original theatrical release back in 2008, I thought Burn After Reading was brutally hilarious— as far as I could tell, though, the general reaction was less enthusiastic. Yet speaking as a fan who has never warmed to The Hudsucker Proxy (a movie frequently cited when one wants to find a red-headed bastard stepchild among their filmography to champion), it’s one of the Coen Brothers’ movies I think is most underrated and one I find myself regularly returning to.
I’m watching Burn After Reading again tonight (11/15/24), after the past week and a half of fear and loathing and anxiety and watching a seemingly endless roster of idiots and toadies ponying up to take up space in a clown car careening toward a spectacular crash into the next presidential cabinet, and I suspect that it’s a movie that is just going to seem sharper, more astringent with impending age. As Frank Zappa said in 1981, assessing the population’s predilection for being fleeced by evangelists whose credentials as certifiable con men and women were more than obvious to those not tithing under their sway, “Dumb all over/ Yes, we are/ Dumb all over/ Near and far/ Dumb all over/ Black and white/ People, we is not wrapped tight.” Burn After Reading is nothing if not an accurate reflection, from 16 years ago (when some took it to be overly cynical and even a bit sour), of just how deep, and how dangerous, that dumb goes.
And really, as an avatar for our age of unenlightenment,
Brad Pitt’s inspired turn as an intellectually translucent gym trainer who
thinks he’s way brighter than he turns out to be, reveals this as the
performance for which he more credibly should have won an Oscar.
Here's the link to my original piece on Burn After Reading, dated September 25, 2008.
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