The Coen brothers uphold their reputation for entertainment and atrocity in their latest movie Burn After Reading. This movie—like all of the other Coen brothers movies—flows smoothly from comical to catastrophic, trite to tasteful, scatterbrained to serious, taciturn to tactile all in the same ninety-six minutes of run time.

The story unfolds that a CIA Agent gets demoted due to a drinking problem (awkwardly observed by a Morman co-worker) and resigns from his position at the agency. He then decides to write a memoir, which falls into the hands of two gym employees that seek to exploit their findings in hopes of a “Good Samaritan” reward.

It’s not really the story that will romantically steal you away—which is precisely why I love the Coen brothers. The intensely ridiculous story and chain of events that are completely beyond the control of any of the characters are simply just small details and the plot is not the main motor that drives the movie. Instead, you develop an attachment or fixation with the characters and suddenly find yourself moving along the timeline through different parts of the plot.

And what a motley mix of characters we have in this movie. Brad Pitt’s comical Chad Feldhimer is a real show-stopper—even in this cast of spotlight stealers! He plays a self-centered resident dumb bunny who bumbles his way to blackmailing Osbourne Cox. The audience will have a hard time taking him seriously and his whimsical mannerisms and maneuvers are hysterical. Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) plays a woman with a mid-life crisis whose loneliness drives her to reinvent herself and find boyfriends using an Internet dating service (b0nus to the nerd reference in the handle names for users on the Internet dating site [LSkywalker22.] )George Clooney illustrates an altogether alluring playboy that mainly stars as Osbourne Cox’s wife’s lover, who actually is a guiltier-than-david-duchovny sex addict. Charming, humorous, and heinous all at the same time, he symbolizes any woman’s favorite ex-boyfriend—passionate, but clueless. I MUST note that his character also demonstrates a remarkable ingenuity for gifts that keep on giving… again and again and again!! John Malkovich is one of my favorite actors ever. In Burn, he plays the former-CIA agent with a drinking problem and the designated harbinger of the word “fuck” throughout the movie (generally, in Coen comedies, there is one). Tilda Swinton plays the genuinely cold, stuck up bitch of the movie. Her trivial pursuits are ridiculously hilarious to any smart, self-sufficient woman. Poor Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins) sings a song of unrequited love for Linda as he moons over her from a far distance away.

What amazes (more precisely, overwhelms) me is that you have these all-too-human characters that sport unspeakable, yet common flaws, mixed up in a grand-force-of-nature chain of events and after opening up two matryoshka dolls of plot, you find a rewarding chunk of fundamental plot pleasure inside. In a cartoonish, silly kind of way, and through the classic affairs consistent in most of the Coen brothers’ movies, Burn touches on mature principles. It gives a comical perspective to the wealthy society. It satirizes the fluidity of marriage. The movie even makes a political statement by exploring the blunders of Homeland Security. Our main characters have delusions of grandeur which cause you to continually reflect on just how big your individual role in human society is. In the end, both you and the CIA learn the same—hilariously basic—lesson.