In a spirit of revenge for his job loss, Cox writes a lid-lifting memoir of his time at the agency's Balkan desk, and a CD containing the top-secret manuscript winds up in the hands of Linda Litzke and Chad Feldheimer, played by Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt. Although entitled to carry a gun, Harry cheerfully tells people he hasn't discharged his weapon in 20 years' service, a revelation that will discomfit those familiar with Chekhov's maxim about what happens to a gun introduced in act one. He is married to Katie, played by Tilda Swinton, a paediatrician with an icy, uptight attitude who is nonetheless conducting an adulterous affair with Harry Pfarrer, a married federal marshal played by George Clooney. John Malkovich stars as Osbourne Cox, a CIA agent who is summoned to the office of his superiors and sacked, apparently for having a drinking problem the accusation comes from a priggish and religious colleague at whom Cox fires a tremendous comeback zinger which I won't give away. Just as the deceased feline will gain a moment's illusory height on hitting the floor, so a powerfully alive animal might ricochet downwards off the ceiling, stunned, after an award-winning jump. Coming straight after the Coens' Oscar-winning triumph, it is maybe the complete opposite of a dead cat bounce.
It appears to be premised - like Ocean's Twelve, Thirteen, Seventeen etc - on the idea that an A-list gang-show lineup will aggregate enough goodwill to see it through.
Burn After Reading somehow brings their unhappiest vices to the surface: their genius for eccentric lo-fi and quirkiness has been transformed into something slapdash, tonally chaotic, uncaring and unfunny, with a baffling streak of crudity.
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