Friday, September 12, 2008

Washington is a mean little world peopled by third-level bureaucrats, randy federal marshals, over-intellectualized Ivy Leaguers, shadowy CIA types and gym workers selling secrets to the Soviets.

But you knew that!

Still, this is your nation's capital in "Burn After Reading," the Coen brothers' follow-up to last year's Academy Award-winning "No Country for Old Men."

CIA analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is told that he is being demoted and transferred, in part because he has a drinking problem.

Outraged, he quits, retreats to his posh Georgetown rowhouse to have a drink and tell his wife (Tilda Swinton), who is throwing a party for Sandy and Harry Pfarrer (Elizabeth Marvel and George Clooney). Harry is having an affair with Mrs. Cox.

Osborne, a yacht-owning Princeton alum who's convinced he's the smartest guy in town (we told you this was more fact than fiction), reacts to his career crisis by dictating his memoirs. These wind up at Hardbodies Gym and in the hands of dense personal trainer Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and his upbeat colleague Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who demand a little from Cox for the return of his classified material.

This is Joel and Ethan Coen in their violent goofball comedy mode, which, when it works, has made them favorites since "Raising Arizona" two decades ago and led to their best film, "Fargo." They can also do dark-but-entertaining, as in "No Country."

Sometimes the films land somewhere in between, yielding such teeth-grinders as the "The Hudsucker Proxy" or -- gasp -- "Burn After Reading."

Oh, the high-octane cast works hard.

But there's nothing to suggest anybody off camera tried that hard, which is fatal to a Coen outing.

"We learned not to do this again," one character observes at the movie's close.

You can't help but wonder if the Coens meant that line, as well as the title of the script, as a tongue-in-cheek reference to themselves.

-- Neely Tucker

Burn After Reading R, 96 minutes Contains pervasive language, sexual content and violence. Area theaters.