Burn After Reading Blu-ray Edition
Burn After Reading is a black comedy where everything that can go wrong in any given situation will with top stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt playing roles as far from their norm as possible.
Film making 20/25
Cinematography 20/25
Audio 18/25
Bonus Features 10/25
Total 68/100
George Clooney plays a womanizing Treasury agent named Harry Pfarrer who is proud of the fact that he has never drawn his gun on the job, till he blows away Brad Pitt who is hiding in the closet. Brad Pitt plays goofy gym trainer Chad Feldheimer who along with fellow employee Linda Litzke played by Frances McDormand finds some secret documents on a CD at their gym.
John Malkovich plays CIA analyst Osbourne Cox who quits his job before being demoted due to his drinking problem and is using his life’s work as a basis for a book he decides to write. His memoirs and financial records are left at the gym by his wife’s lawyer’s secretary after the wife gets some financial records for her impending divorce from Osbourne.
Osbourne has no idea his wife is planning on leaving him and his life gets more complicated when the two gym workers try to blackmail him with the information on the disc they find, assuming its top secret stuff. Osbourne tells Chad he’s nuts to try and blackmail a federal employee for top secret information, saying it’s a federal crime to even have the disc much less use it as blackmail.
Chad gets punched in the nose by Osbourne to get the point across to Chad that he will not take the blackmailing scheme lightly and Chad runs away while Osbourne takes off in his car. Linda and Chad chase after Osbourne but end up losing him and Linda decides to take the disc to the Russian Embassy.
When Linda hands over the disc she tells the Russians she has more information and they leave with Linda telling Chad to go to Osbourne’s house to get more information. Before sneaking into the house of the Ex CIA agent Linda tells Chad to cut the labels out of his clothes and not carry any ID, she saw this in a spy film and thinks it will help him if he gets caught.
Harry has been sleeping with Katie, the wife of Osbourne, and meets her at her home after Katie has thrown Osbourne out for having slept around on her. Harry leaves for a jog while Katie goes to work and Chad breaks into the house thinking Harry will be gone awhile.
Harry returns after a quick jog and accidentally shoots Chad in the face when Harry surprises him in the closet hiding, thus ruining his never having pulled his gun in the line of duty streak. When Harry searches Chad he finds the labels missing and no ID and thinks Chad is a spy so he dumps the body and gets really paranoid.
Harry has a fight with Katie a few days later and sees a man who has been following him for some time and finally manages to stop him and find out who he is. The man is a detective working for a lawyer following Harry so that Harry’s wife will have dirt on him for a divorce as well.
Harry has also been dating Linda and working his charms getting her into bed and they meet with Linda telling Harry about Chad and how he has not been seen for days. Harry questions Linda and discovers that Chad is the one he killed so he runs away from Linda in a panic.
Linda’s boss at the gym, Ted Treffon played by Richard Jenkins has seen that Linda is upset and she confides in him their plans and he agrees to go to Osbourne’s to find out more information about Osbourne from his computer. Ted is caught by Osbourne who snuck back into his home after his wife drained his bank accounts to raid the place and get anything of value.
Ted is shot in the arm by Osbourne and then tries to flee out the front door only to have Osbourne kill him in the street with a hatchet. The film ends with a CIA agent giving a report about the whole incident to his superior who has an easy time getting rid of all the evidence of all the lousy dealing with Osbourne and the rest.
The agents run down all the list of dead and decide it best if the whole mess remains a mystery, after all the dead are never going to be missed, Osbourne was shot when the CIA took him down for killing Ted in the street and Osbourne is in a coma. Harry fled to Venezuela and the CIA let him go to be rid of him and Linda gets the CIA to pay for her plastic surgery that was the initial reason to bribe Osbourne.
The whole mess is best left as is and the agents close the case and vow to never do this again, whatever it is they did. While Burn After Reading is a bit hard to follow and even a bit hard to really get into at the beginning it is good film in the end.
The bungling and seeing some big actors playing parts that show the more normal and human people instead of the big heroes and larger than life characters is great. You really get the sense that the writers and others working on the film have a great sense of humor not only for the government agencies and the actors but of the film industry as a whole.
Casting Brad Pitt as a bungling gym trainer who couldn’t get tough with an ex-CIA agent if he tried is hilarious but many of the stereotypical roles are well done. George Clooney as the tough yet totally paranoid Treasury agent who is sleeping with so many women yet couldn’t tell his wife is doing the same thing is great.
Burn After Reading is a really good film and one that shows the top actors like Pitt and Clooney for people we want to see them as in films. The Blu-ray Edition of Burn After Reading has some decent additional features but not too many.
There is the usual making of features and a quick bonus from George Clooney working with the Coen brothers again but not a whole lot here as far as extras. There is the BD Live as well on the Blu-ray edition but this has been a bit disappointing for me from the hype that has been in the past.
BD Live is supposed to add all kinds of content to a movie that is available for download but it seems to me to only be more trailers of movies and some extra clips that could have been put on the Blu-ray discs in the first place. Other than the couple of added making of features there really is not much here for bonus features and other than the high definition this is one movie that buying the DVD may be a better option.
Of course if you have this library full of Blu-rays and want to keep it all blue than be my guest, the Blu-ray version does have the full movie in all its high def glory. Burn After Reading is one of the those darker comedies that does take about fifteen minutes to really get up steam and once you start in with all the counterpoints each characters has with each other it really gets good.