If he was in a silent film, playing the man who ties the young woman to the railroad track, any responsible director would tell him to tone it down. Clooney goes into full ill-advised comedy mode: he has his non-handsome beard on the go he waggles his head around he does huge mugging "reaction" faces with big frowny expressions, furious grimaces and evil grins. Almost every actor is cast and directed in a way calculated to bring out his or her worst traits. They are brainless bozos who work at a gym and figure on selling this document to the Russian embassy to pay for Linda's longed-for cosmetic surgery.Įxasperatingly, the fundamental plot-point of how Cox's CD finds its way into the gym is fudged, and the story itself runs calamitously aground. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |