Deborah Ross

Angry, icy, goofy and dumb

Burn After Reading<br /> <em>15, Nationwide </em>

issue 18 October 2008

Burn After Reading
15, Nationwide

Burn After Reading, a ‘comedy thriller’, is the latest Coen brothers movie, their first after No Country for Old Men, and it is a very, very hard film to like. I wanted to like it, I tried to like it, I strained to like it with all the fibres of my being bar two — they’ve gone off on a mini-break to the Cotswolds — but I could not, and I think I know why. It’s just not any good. It’s arch, inelegant, lazy, unaffecting and has George Clooney doing that thing he does which involves a great deal of face-pulling coupled with many looks of saucer-eyed surprise. This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t sleep with George if asked, because I still so would, but I might feel obliged to give him a pep talk post-coitally.

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