Immediately goes for the jugular of awkward social interaction and then combines that with the awkwardness of senseless and accidental homicide. My favorite scenes were between the CIA Supervisor played by J. K. Simmons (J. Jonah Jameson in Spiderman) and the CIA Officer played by David Rasch (Senator, Flags of Our Fathers) as they comically tried (not too hard) to unravel just what the hell was going on. I liked it enough but, as dark comedies go, it’s no War of the Roses or Being John Malkovich. Fargo, also directed by Coen, was much better.

Burn After Reading (Netflix)

Comments

1. Pat J on 2009-01-12 07:27:35 wrote: I’m with you about the best scenes being in the CIA building as they tried to unravel what was going on. I thought it was a decent film, mis-advertised – the TV ads and trailers made it look like a screwball comedy, not a ‘holy crap, someone just got killed with an axe’ kind of comedy.