Burn After Reading

New Coen brothers movies are usually a reason to put out the bunting, and Burn After Reading has promised to be a cause for great celebration. The cast is superlative and there's an intricate plot involving gym bunnies, Google maps and goofballs - truly, it seems to have just about everything. Alas, the only thing it doesn't have is much of a pulse. This time, the brothers are spoofing the espionage movie, and so we begin at the CIA HQ where an operative named Osborne (John Malkovich) has been demoted for alcoholism. Osborne's wife (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with incurably vain federal marshal Harry (George Clooney), who is also dallying with internet dating, where he meets Linda (Frances McDormand) who works at a gym alongside Chad (Brad Pitt), a man who puts the buff into buffoon. It is via this straggly connection that a computer disc containing all manner of CIA secrets winds up at Chad's gymnasium and feathers start to fly. The Coens' absurd, brittle humour is usually tempered by a warm human presence, and perhaps the problem here is a want of such a figure. There are hints of it in the sweetness of Chad (Pitt, delivering a magnificent turn) and in the ever-wonderful McDormand, but what the Coens have delivered here is an essentially excellent film marred by a clutch of hard-edged caricatures. A little softness wouldn't have gone amiss. ·