
There's plenty of fire in Burn After Reading, the Coen brothers' playful and pungent tale set amid the bungling bureaucrats of the CIA and an assortment of other ditzy denizens of Washington, DC Focus Features John Malkovich portrays a CIA analyst with a drinking problem in the Coen brothers' latest film, "Burn After Reading." In the Coens' coterie of accomplishments, Burn After Reading is less like last year's scary, Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men and more like the giddily humorous Fargo. There is, though, a shocking moment of violence in Burn After Reading. The film has a clique of dysfunctional, insecure, crazed characters dealing with paranoia, infidelity and spy vs. spy antics. George Clooney and Brad Pitt, in particular, oceans apart from their Ocean's 11, 12 and 13 indulgences, craft moments that are not only funny but touching. Then there's Frances McDormand, the fine actress who's married to co-writer, co-producer, co-director (with his brother, Ethan) Joel Coen, who guided her to an Oscar for Fargo. An employee of the Hardbodies Fitness Center in Georgetown, an incessant online dater, desperate for plastic surgery, she creates a heartbreaking portrait of a miserably lonely woman who can't grasp a meaningful relationship. Consistently histrionic John Malkovich, meanwhile, plays a CIA analyst, demoted because of an apparent drinking problem. His explosions of rancor at agency honchos blasts from the screen: You're a Mormon, he scowls at one lightweight. Next <b>...</b>
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