Burn After Reading

**1/2 – Having written, directed and produced roughly one movie per year since their glory days in the mid-90s, I get the feeling that the Coen Brothers’ prolific movie-making pace is starting to catch up with them, as most of their recent releases have been little more than mediocre. Nowadays they seem to rely almost entirely on quirky characters with goofy names played by big name stars in order to fuel their films instead of combining those facets with interesting stories and hilarious dialogue like they used to with films like “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski”. While 2009’s “A Serious Man” would be an exception to that trend (not that it was good, but that it starred Judaism instead of big name actors), their preceding film “Burn After Reading” falls squarely into the above category. It stars Clooney, Pitt, Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and Frances McDormand all playing characters with dopey names like Linda Litzke, Chad Feldheimer, Osbourne Cox and Harry Pfarrer who have differing arrays of interaction with each other ranging from blackmail to adultery to getting shot in the face while hiding in a closet. The story has a fairly intriguing plot that kind of weaves in and out of each of the main characters’ lives and their varying levels of interplay with one another, but I never found myself able to fully commit to the idea. I chalk that up mainly to the flat dialogue and lack of humor that have been indicative of all the Coen Brothers’ movies from recent years. I can’t really say too much bad about the movie itself, but the fact that it helps to show the Coen Brothers’ continual downward slide is a bit disheartening.