In Continuum.

I am not exactly a fan of the Coen Brothers. No Country for Old Men was great, but their brand of humor doesn't get to me very well usually. Dark humor has a very specific target audience, I think, and you really only get their humor if you are on the exact same frequency. I didn't get Intolerable Cruelty, and neither did O Brother, Where Art Thou excite me very much. That is not to say that the Coen Brothers are not good directors - they are. It's just the matter of getting used to their style of filming and story telling, that's all. With No Country for Old Men, they rose a few notches on my radar checklist, though they still remain pretty low down there with all the other so-so directors, for me. I think they are rather over-rated, to be honest, and they are not who the public would like to make them out to be. Fargo was average, at best, though a lot of people hail it as being a masterpiece - really? I think they make fairly decent movies, and "fairly decent" are the perfect words to describe Burn After Reading. I pretty much know what to expect from a Coens Brothers film, and this one was no exception. I did not expect myself to be blown away by this film, which is why I enjoyed it quite a bit when watched it. Besides, there is nothing more satisfying than watching Hollywood A-list actors playing stupid in a movie. 

The story is rather complicated, but I will try to sum it up within a paragraph. Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) just got fired from his job as an analyst at the CIA because of his drinking problem, and that is not good news for his wife Katie (Tilda Swinton), since their marriage is already on the verge of breaking up. Kate, at the same time, is sleeping with Harry (George Clooney), who is also a married man working for the CIA as a treasurer of some kind. Harry, however, is a serial dater on the Internet, and he scores a date with Linda (Frances McDormand) and they fall for each other after going out on a date. Linda, however, is a colleague of Chad (Brad Pitt) at a gym called Hard Bodies, where they found a CD in the locker room that contained "CIA Shit", when it really is a memoir written by Osburne Cox. So, Chad and Linda tries to blackmail Osbourne for fifty thousand dollars to get his "secret CIA shit" back, while Osbourne deals with a cheating wife. It's all very complicated, I know, with all these people being involved with one another throughout the story. Let me assure you that, though the story gets even more complicated, it is very masterfully flashed out in the film. 

The Coen Brothers are clever people, they have a way of showing something shocking without trying to make it shocking. They don't use elaborate special effects or sound effects in the background to make an event on screen look shocking - it just is. If you have watched No Country for Old Men, you pretty much know how abruptly it ended. That is the kind of things they do, and this film is no different. The directors insert random events into the movie, twists and turns that are supposed to be shocking but, they are being executed in such a manner that you can't help but go "Did that just happen?" Their matter-of-fact way of filming is unique, in my opinion, stripped of the conventional theatrics, it does make the story somewhat more realistic. The humor does not try to be humorous at all, they just get thrown about haphazardly around the film, and kind of jump out at you whenever the directors deem fit. Some are merely amusing, some are clever, while others are just downright hilarious. Of course, there are the ones that slipped by myself, the ones I didn't get. But let's admit that John Malkovich's speech about Mormons was hilarious to no end. Also, everything Brad Pitt does in this film was just so odd, it was hilarious. 

It's strange to think that Brad Pitt acts the best when he is trying to be a goofball, or just plain weird. He was nominated for an Oscar for his acting in 12 Monkeys, when he played a crazy guy. His performance in Fight Club was also one of his best to me, only because he played an insane person. This time around, he plays an overly enthusiastic guy working in a gym, who is obsessed about keeping fit. He isn't very smart, but he wants to think that he is, which makes the scenes he is in very funny in my opinion. The fact that the roles were written with specific actors in mind makes the actors fit perfectly into the characters. The acting calibre in this film is as high as it gets, with everybody doing their parts extremely well. When you have actors like John Malkovich, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton playing against each other, you shouldn't expect anything less than amazing when it comes to the performances. Frances McDormand gets to play a little goofy in this role, Tilda Swinton still does the icy bitch very well, and John Malkovich is once again the guy that gets pissed off and loses it at the end of all things. 

The story in itself is twisted, but it is easily understood. The tag line of this film incapsulates this film: Intelligence is relative. We have a story about a bunch of people doing very stupid things, and then the end result is this tragedy that nobody expects. My friend Jonathan watched it a month ago and thought it to be "normal", in which case I think it isn't unfair. I think this is a pretty ordinary film, but I suppose that is where it becomes more realistic and effective. Here we have an ordinary setting with ordinary characters, doing extraordinarily stupid things and getting themselves into troubles that cannot possibly imagine. Intelligence is indeed relative in this film, and being on the upper hand does not necessarily make you the clever one. I enjoyed this movie because I wasn't expecting very much from it, which is why the end result is a good enough film to satisfy my hunger for new movies to watch these days. It is sufficient, I'd say, enough. 

This film is not going to satisfy a lot of people I imagine, simply because it isn't the side-bursting kind of laughter that we'd usually expect. This is a sort of thriller, a sort of comedy, and neither is very effective. But together, under the direction of the Coens, they somehow make everything work to a certain degree. I shall file this film right between Intolerable Cruelty and No Country for Old Men, since it didn't disappoint me, and yet it surpassed my expectations all at once. It isn't exactly recommended for everybody out there, because you may find their style of directing rather anti-climatic. But it is a good enough movie for a Sunday afternoon I am sure, especially when you are experiencing the holidays such as myself. When you are in this state of mind, nothing really matters and anything goes. Just sit back, relax, and watch the stupidity of A-list actors unfold in this film. 

7.5/10