Entertainment

Idiot’s Delight: ‘Burn After Reading’

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Joel and Ethan Coen's "Burn After Reading" stars a moronic health-club worker played by Brad Pitt...

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and an idiot marshal played by George Clooney.

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The film has enough funny lines and weird situations - some comedy business with a sex chair lovingly constructed by the Clooney character is the highlight - that it could age into a cult film like "The Big Lebowski."

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John Malkovich plays an obtuse CIA analyst who quits the agency when offered a demotion, angering his cold wife, played by Tilda Swinton, who is having an affair with a married treasury man (Clooney).

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When dim co-workers (Frances McDormand and Pitt) discover a data disc left behind by Swinton's lawyer character, they try to blackmail the CIA man.

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George Clooney and Frances McDormand, who also plays a moronic health-club worker, have a good time in "Burn After Reading."

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Malkovich mutters pompously about the principles of George Kennan and gets drunk singing the ol' Princeton fight song with fellow aristo-coots.

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Pitt, flapping his arms to the beat of his iPod and saying things like, "Do you have any water? I gotta hydrate," has to be told that, when attempting extortion, one should wear something more formal than a cranberry health-club uniform.

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Pitt dons spandex workout gear in the movie.

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As much as anything, the movie is about the pieces of flair, like Clooney's mall-rat gold chain.

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The Coens are ice-pick cruel, dismissive of sentiment, meticulous in their design and utterly without hope.