Burn After Reading

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⭐ 8.0/10

(Originally written by Tim)

A couple years ago I went on a real Coen Brothers kick, and somehow this one was skipped. It's not super high in most people's ratings, but because of the cast alone I figured it was worth checking out. Seriously, basically every person in the movie has been nominated for more than one Oscar, with multiple winners. Francis McDormand, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, what else could you want.

This movie was a real treat! Similar to Fargo or Raising Arizona, it is about some strange people making bad decisions and having everything unravel. In this case, there are 3 groups of people, and their bad decisions start to overlap as their lives get tangled up. There is a lot of trademark Coen humour, and I was bought in the whole time.

I will repeat, the whole time. You know why? This movie is 1 hour 37 minutes long! Amazing! No need to check my phone a single time, because this is a tightly knit, no cruft story. Love it!

I would rate this a bit higher, but it doesn't have the lasting impact the movies I listed above do. On the Coen scale this one isn't amazing, but it probably only suffers from being compared to their other movies. I'll let Brad Pitt tell you how delighted I was to find this movie.

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