(This review is riddled with spoilers or near-spoilers, so you might want to read after watching.)

Joel and Ethan Coen's BURN AFTER READING opens with what appears to be a spy satellite's view of a computer-generated Earth. I think. Perhaps it's a model. Whatever it is, it's laughably fake, which means it's a detail the Coens really want you to notice. That this artificiality is accompanied by a bombastic Carter Burwell cue seemingly swiped from John Landis's SPIES LIKE US only serves to heighten the onrushing sense of parody; and as the camera comes crashing down through the fake clouds toward a fake United States and through the fake roof of a fake building in fake Langley, Virginia to reveal real CIA desk jockeys doing really stupid shit, your only response is to put your guard down and let the Coens enjoy their spirited, if inconsequential, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN victory lap. Visually, they've just told you they're up to nothin' but funnin', right?

This is confirmed the minute Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) unleashes a torrent of righteous indignation in response to his unceremonious removal from "the Balkans desk"; it just sounds like an outmoded, meaningless assignment - and the thorough absence of stakes is reflected in the weary demeanor of Cox's superior (David Rasche) and the slumping body language of all the other bureaucrats lounging about the sterile office. Whatever Cox did at "the Balkans desk", it was of zero consequence, thus rendering his threats to write a tell-all "memoir" pathetically empty. This is a man who has done nothing and seen less, a balled-up mass of inarticulate acrimony who wants to tear down the organization which just discarded him, but can't because he never got anywhere within it. Cox is a married, childless, friendless island of scorn; his only confidant is his invalid father who once, we're led to believe, mattered at the Agency. Were the old man capable of speech, he'd probably upbraid Cox for being a failure.

It's unclear as to what's kept Cox's ice queen wife, Katie (Tilda Swinton), hanging around, but now that her husband's fringe-of-the-Beltway career has ended, she's more than ready to throw him over for Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a former Secret Service agent who compensates for having never fired his sidearm in the line of duty by firing his other weapon as often as possible. It's curious that Katie is willing to share her home with an unrepentant philanderer, but Harry's pathological infidelity frees her of feigning any emotional attachment (this chilliness extends to Katie's medical practice; she's a pediatrician who hates kids). And it's a brilliant arrangement for Harry, even though he has yet to break the news to his wife, an author of children's books who's currently touring the country in support of her latest work (and having an affair of her own).

And then there's the biggest nobody of all, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), a fortysomething gym employee who's heartbroken that her company's health insurance won't pay for the elective liposuction and breast enhancement procedures that might make her a marginally more attractive (and happier) woman. It's a hopeless situation until her co-worker Chad (Brad Pitt) stumbles across a computer disc containing what he believes to be "raw intelligence"; it's the kind of highly sensitive information someone might pay top dollar to retrieve. All they have to do is contact the owner and shake him down for a tidy five-figure payday. Little do they know that the unfinished memoirs of Osborne Cox are worth less than the disc to which they've been contemptuously committed.

The Coens' touch is so light in the early going (despite Burwell's deathly serious score, which sounds like a series of unused cues for NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN), that it's a bit shocking when the blood begins to flow and the bodies start to pile up. That said, one's startled reaction to the first serious act of violence in the film is not a gasp, but a big ol' belly laugh. It's the only possible reaction given the string of idiotic presumptions that have brought the suddenly deceased to the bedroom of Osborne Cox. And to think it all began with one man's bilious assault on an establishment which barely knew he existed. But there can't be anything to the idea of impotent rage producing the premature discharging of a firearm by a nymphomaniac who's never shot another human being in the line of duty, can there? Of course not! There's nothing to take away from this. It's all just a frivolity concocted by two filmmakers who've made a career out of frustrating critical deconstruction.

Not so fast. When the great J.K. Simmons, as an upper-mid-level intelligence type (we know he's someone because his hallway is carpeted), slams the book shut on all that's transpired over the ninety minutes, claiming that nothing happened and that all we've learned is to never do it again, you've no choice but to conclude that there's some misdirection afoot. And, upon further review, there really is. Whereas most Coen noirs are more firmly rooted in the works of Hammett (MILLER'S CROSSING), Chandler (THE BIG LEBOWSKI) and Cain (THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE), the low-level shenanigans of BURN AFTER READING play like a D.C.-bound goof on the spy fiction of John le Carré; except, instead of being bound to lifeless, unfeeling nations, these scurrying fools are beholden to instant gratification. They want what they perceive is best for them as soon as possible, and they're willing, particularly in the case of Linda Litzke, to sacrifice the security of their country to obtain it.

It's survival of the pettiest, and it's telling that the only person who achieves their objective is the one most hellbent on their own self-interest. But then the Coens' camera retreats from fake Langley, back through the fake clouds and out into the vast expanses of fake space, and we're reminded that people just don't get away with such things in our universe. It sure is swell to live in a world where justice prevails.

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks