Burn After ReadingReview and Synopsis

Poster art for "Burn After Reading."

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Showtimes + Tickets
  • Burn After Reading
  • Opened September 12, 2008 | Runtime:1 hr. 36 min.
  • R
    pervasive language, some sexual content and violence
  • Information for parents: Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+. Read More
  • A dark spy-comedy from Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen. An ousted CIA official's (Academy Award nominee John Malkovich) memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise gym employees intent on exploiting their find.
  • Cast: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt
  • Director: Ethan Coen
  • Genres: Comedy

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Burn After Reading Recent Fan Reviews

  • Must Go!

    Wait. Hold On. What?

    I can't yet decide whether I was more delighted by the overall scrumptious weirdness of the plot or by the brilliantly balanced weirdness of the characters. As a whole, an entirely smartly entertaining grotesque as you would hope for in a Coen production.
    I am still chuckling at the McDormand-Pitt combination. Hilarious. I think they steal the movie.

  • So-so

    Burned

    by randomo

    Film wasn't too bad - I enjoy dark, dry humor - but I really expected more laughs in this one. Brad Pitt displayed excellent comedic timing in Mr. and Mrs. Smith and I hoped for the same in this movie, but felt he was too over-the-top and didn't deliver except for a couple scenes. I liked how the storyline kept moving though and also the surprise ending. This movie is more "DVD-rental" worthy instead of "theater-going" worthy.

  • Go

    Burn After Reading

    by Richmi

    I'll preface this by saying that I am a "non-religious" person, because I can't help but wonder if this movie was intended to be a film about several people indulging in the various "7 deadly sins" and reaping their unfavorable results. Just about every major character went through a lot of self-created misery over, basically, nothing but their own misperceptions of various situations and things.

    This film could have easily been titled, "Much Ado About Nothing"...which is what made it hilarious to me at the end. It might make it easier on the viewer to understand that, although the movie does have some funny parts in it, my impression was that the film was created like a joke... the whole film building up to the ridiculous punchline in the very last minutes.

    There are some lessons to be learned from this film. Or not. :-)

    Addendum: The critic reviews on this site by the LA Times and USA Today do a good job of giving you a sense of what to expect.

Burn After Reading Critic Reviews

Go Avg. Critic Score out of 100 Metascore ® based on all critic ratings.

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 80
    Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

    Because it's a Coen brothers film before it's anything else, this is about as...

  • 75
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    It would be no country for movie lovers without the Coens. They still manage to...

  • 75
    San Francisco Chronicle | Walter Addiego

    Doesn't add up to much, but it's fast and funny and lets a bunch of top-drawer...

  • 75
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    The characters are zany, the plot coils upon itself with dizzy zeal, and the...

Burn After Reading Movie Ratings + Reviews

Fans say

So-so 11,427 fan reviews

Critics say

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