Remembering ‘Burn After Reading,’ and One of Brad Pitt’s Best Performances
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Brad Pitt shines in this atypical role in this hilarious Coen Brothers movie.
**Light spoilers ahead**
Brad Pitt has had a tremendous career as both a producer and an actor. His filmography is full of prolific movies that have been a success at the box office and critically acclaimed. In the latter half of his career he’s found himself taking more dramatic rolls like Ad Astra and his upcoming collaboration with director Damien Chazelle about the silent film era. We got a reminder of Pitt’s comedy chops in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, but we haven’t seen Pitt fully lean into comedy like he did in Burn After Reading, which I think is one of his best performances.
Burn After Reading is a black comedy written and directed by The Coen Brothers starring Frances McDormand, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton. With a runtime of only 96 minutes the plot cruises along with sharp dialogue and fantastic performances that will cause fans of black comedies to laugh out loud at the hilarious twists and turns in this tight script.
The film is one of the seven collaborations Frances McDormand has with the Coen Brothers. She plays Linda Litzke, a gym employee who is on a search for money by any means necessary to pay for a list of surgeries to revamp her body. Her inept, aptly named goofball coworker, Chad (Brad Pitt), comes across a CD that belongs to Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a recently fired alcoholic CIA linguist. Chad and Linda attempt to extort Osborne Cox for money by peddling the CD to the Russian embassy.
The brilliant performances contribute to a fulfilling end of the Coen Brothers’ self-described ‘idiot trilogy’ after O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), and Intolerable Cruelty (2003). While George Clooney gives a tremendous performance as Harry Pfarrer, a handsome but goofy serial adulterer, the real stand out performance is Brad Pitt. Pitt gives one of the best performances of his career as he makes us wonder if he’s a character actor trapped in a leading actor’s body (I know, the hottest take from 2005). Burn After Reading further showcases Pitt’s incredible range and how we can’t take his acting for granted.
How much Pitt is able to do with just mannerisms and looks alone is incredible. From his rehearsed squinting eyes and his line “looks can be deceptive” that he falls back on as a crutch as the situation gets away from him will cause deep belly laughs. Pitt’s quality is always consistent, but this is a role we should remember when looking back at his filmography.
Some audiences may have a hard time surrendering to the absurdity, coincidences and language throughout the film. But if you have issues with those things you probably weren’t interested in seeing a Coen Brothers movie in the first place. Tilda Swinton and Elizabeth Marvel are almost wasted in their roles as Marvel spends most of it off screen on a book tour, and Swinton as nothing more but the voice of reason for Malkovich’s antics.
The Coen Brothers have this incredible ability to make the audience embrace the absurd and get entranced in these charming wacky characters while telling a simple yet compelling story. Burn After Reading has earned its place alongside No Country for Old Men (2009) as one of the Coen Brothers’ best and one of Pitts best performances.
