The mousy, self-conscious Linda, placing an ad on the very site favored by Harry, soon becomes one of his paramours. Harry likes to meet women over the Internet and have sex with them. Meanwhile, Osborne’s wife has been sleeping with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a mid-level government agent with several personality quirks (a number of food allergies, an interest in hardwood flooring, etc.) and a wife of his own. Osborne Cox, for his part, cannot believe how dumb his extortionists are, and he’s not afraid to tell them, in loud, profane terms - Osborne swears at a highly advanced level - just how much they will regret this. Chad has no malice in him what he has is childlike excitement at getting involved in a caper, and his enthusiasm for the game of blackmail far exceeds his ability to pull it off. Her partner in this is Chad (Brad Pitt), a dippy, peppy fellow trainer whose hairstyle and I.Q. Unlike most of them, Linda soon turns on us: When a CD containing what she believes is top-secret CIA information is found in the gym’s locker room, she is more than happy to blackmail its owner, Osborne Cox, for the money she needs for the operations. Like all of Frances McDormand’s characters, Linda is immediately likable and sweet. Meanwhile, at a local gym called Hardbodies, there is a trainer named Linda (Frances McDormand) who wants a tummy tuck, liposuction, and minor plastic surgery to make herself feel younger and more fit. “Next to you we all have a drinking problem!”) Returning to his cold, humorless wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton), in Georgetown, he decides to write a memoir (which he pronounces “mem-wuh”) as a means of exorcising his CIA demons and having the last laugh on the Agency. (“You’re a Mormon!” he yells at his supervisor. Our first jerk is Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a bitter, prissy CIA operative who has just been fired for, among other things, having a drinking problem. It’s played like a spoof of techno-thrillers (complete with “24”-style musical score and teletype captions telling us the locations), only instead of smart people outfoxing each other, we have a parade of idiotic jerks screwing up their lives through greed and sheer stupidity. It is, however, a lesser Coen work, a negligible dark comedy that will be remembered alongside, say, “The Ladykillers” rather than with, say, “The Big Lebowski.” Joel and Ethan Coen have never made a bad movie, and “Burn After Reading” certainly is not one.
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