Movie Review: Burn After Reading

Comedy of errors can be lots of fun. Here intelligence operatives come under the gun and are ripe for ribbing when a washed up CIA analyst goes AWOL. That’s true in some respects. Poor Osborne Cox is at his wit’s end. News of a “demotion” in his rank doesn’t sit too well with the tried and true campaigner. Officials at Langley get more than what they bargained for when Osborne decides to pen his memoirs.

Caution is everything in a secret agent’s life and by accident those files go missing. In real life these things do happen only here a couple of dimwitted fitness pros happen upon the coveted information. So the race is on. Would-be sleuths Chad Feldheimer and Linda Litzke think they’ve stumbled on some sort of national treasure. Dreams of riches are clearly in their eyes. Next we see a pair of get rich quick artists try to extort money from a down on his luck spook. Bad timing sort of complicates the situation.

All of these shenanigans aside, other members of Mr. Cox’s family and assorted friends engage in a series of bed hopping excursions that somehow overlap with the missing spy secrets. Hunky George Clooney (Ocean’s 12) has a field day as a roguish bureaucrat up to his neck in dalliances with apparently every eligible woman in the beltway. Similar lonely hearts and the high tech efficiency of finding true love over the internet are hilariously explored by the always reliable Frances McDormand (Fargo).