Burn After Reading is a clever black comedy that catches the spirit of our frantic times where surveillance, computers, fitness, and adultery hold sway. The Coen brothers have created a very funny follow-up to their grim Academy Award-winning No Country for Old Men. The A-list cast makes the most of the zany characters and the wacky one-liners.

Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is a veteran CIA analyst who spent his time fighting what he calls "a league of morons." This elitist attitude has gotten him booted out of his job, and he has started to write a memoir. His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), a doctor, is having an affair with Harry (George Clooney), a federal marshal, who regularly goes jogging after having sex with her. Although married to Sandy (Elizabeth Marvel), a children's book author, he dates women he meets through a computer dating service.

That is how Harry connects with Linda (Frances McDormand), a middle-aged woman who works at a fitness center. She wants to reinvent herself through extensive plastic surgery and is angry that her health insurance company won't foot the bill for her makeover. Meanwhile, she is completely ignoring her boss at the gym, Ted (Richard Jenkins), who wants her to go out with him. When Linda and her gum-chewing, Gatorade-swilling co-worker Chad (Brad Pitt) find a computer disk containing what they think are classified secrets from a spy named Osborne Cox, they decide to blackmail him. Chad's in it for the excitement; Linda wants the money for her surgeries.

The Coen brothers, who have written and directed this black comedy, have created several pivotal scenes which vividly capture and convey the craziness of the times in which we live. Here are several examples. It is a hoot watching a slick cosmetic surgeon (Jeffrey DeMunn) try to convince Linda that he can transform her sagging middle-age body and make her into a totally appealing new person. Once she buys into his spiel, she is unrelenting in her quest to make it happen. In another hilarious scene, Chad makes contact with Osborne on the phone and tries to pass himself off as a Good Samaritan who has found his disk and would be willing to accept a reward. But the ex-CIA agent goes ballistic and sets in motion a series of incidents which send Chad and Linda into treacherous waters. Other funny scenes involve an embarrassed CIA officer (David Rasche) who must explain to his superior (JK Simmons) the meaning of the confusing events set in motion by Osborne, Chad, and Linda.

The Coen brothers poke fun at the surfeit of information gathered by surveillance and the agency's inability to decipher what it all signifies. They also skewer the obsessions of many Americans including fitness, sexual variety, and the idea that having more money can solve all our problems.

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