Burn After Reading

Funny how a little natural disaster can change your perspective of the movies. Sitting in an air conditioned theater at the Edwards Grand Palace a few days after the disaster of Ike, watching Burn After Reading, a character utters the line: "Do you have any bottled water?"
"There's tap water."
"Are you kidding? Tap water."
This line got quite a laugh from the hunkered masses in the darkened theater although it's doubtful the same line was as funny to people in other cities.
Burn After Reading is pure Coen Brothers anarchy. On one hand its a spy thriller but the other appendage concerns neurotic adulterous couples playing musical beds. Among the films of the Coens its a middling venture, certainly not on the level of No Country For Old Men or The Big Lebowski. Of course, middling Coen Brothers provides far more entertainment than typical Hollywood dross.
George Clooney plays a Federal Marshall who cheats on his wife via the internet. That's how he meets Frances McDormand who works with Brad Pitt and Richard Jenkins at a fitness center. Clooney's also having an affair with Tilda Swinton a hammering harpy whose married to John Malkovich. Malkovich, a CIA analyst who has just been demoted, says "fuck" about 100 times and each time it's pretty fucking funny. David Rasche (does anybody remember Sledgehammer?) and J. K. Simmons are higher ups at the Agency and as such serve as the film's Greek chorus since they're covertly spying on the activities of everyone else. These guys give Burn After Reading an Anderson Tapes feel since they deem it necessary to erase all the tapes, or more literally burn all the bodies.
There's some serious Coen Brothers rhyming going on with motifs from their previous films. At one point McDormand demands of Pitt, "Where's the money?" Which echoes the line: Where's the money Lebowski? Although Burn After Reading has very little actual violence the last reel contains one of the most explicit murder scenes your humble wind weary scribe has ever seen. A big part of the realism of said muder comes from the use of CGI. Remember in No Country For Old Men where that guy gets a hole blown into his forehead by that pneumatic hammer that Javier Bardem carries around. Combine that with the scene at the end of Fargo where Peter Stomare runs after Steve Buscemi with an axe. In that film the scene cuts right before the blade makes bodily contact. In Burn After Reading the weapon is a hatchet and we see it gash a human head before the editor cuts. Burn After Reading may be a minor work from the Coens but the overall effect is similar to listening to your favorite group sing a familiar song using their signature chords.