Burn After Reading

Well, I finally saw Burn After Reading, and while it featured good filmmaking, humor, pacing and style, the lack of a definite protagonist and the fact that almost none of the main characters are even remotely likable makes it very difficult to enjoy the film. While the Coens' characters have long been less than perfect, they're at least human enough for us to identify with, but Burn takes the "imperfection" of the characters far enough that its impossible to like them, and they fail to function as accurate criticisms of human beings because they're so completely hateful that they fail to register as human. While the film does pack some good comedic lines, it is not essentially a comedy, and the grimness quickly douses the fun of the comedy, worsening the film by making it difficult to be able to tell when the Coens are being serious and when they're making a joke out of there pathetic, hateable characters, until the whole film becomes one big joke on watching the torment of their characters. The filmmaking is better than the characters are, with strong pacing and performances, and crisp photography, but it is not enough to redeem this otherwise shallow, unfulfilling  film.

The Short Version

|score- |||||- 5.5/10|