Great movie. Really entertaining acting work from Clooney and Pitt.

An absolutely hilarious story about 2 dimwitted gym employees who find what they believe to be government secrets. They then try to turn a profit on the disc, one to help finance plastic surgery. This is a must watch, funny, drama, and a contraption built by Clooney that will leave you speechless.

"I don't know sir." "I don't fucking know either."
Fuck all goes no where, but it makes it look good. Still a relatively pointless waste of time with some dry/dark humor thrown in.

“What a clusterf***.” The Coen brothers’ black comedy Burn After Reading is a complete mess that doesn’t deliver that many laughs. When two gym trainers find a computer disc containing the memoir of a CIA analyst they attempt to blackmail him; meanwhile a philandering US marshal grows increasingly paranoid that he’s being spied on by someone. Starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich and Brad Pitt, the film has an impressive cast that gives fairly good performances. The problem is, most of the characters are unlikable assholes. And the plot goes nowhere, which would be alright if it was a fun ride or had some clever twist of irony…but it doesn’t. Still, the satiric wit of the Coen brothers makes for a few fun comedic moments. Burn After Reading is entertaining at times but doesn’t really amount to much.

Simple story, don't know if they intentionally tried to make it more complex! Bad storytelling!

Was expecting something else. Kind of weird ending.

5/10

Funny at times like the J.K. Simmons bits but most of the time just extremely annoying characters

This was the first Coens comedies I managed to watch in theatres, so it has a special place in my heart. Retrospectively it’s been usually counted as one of their minor works, but it’s still my favorite among their comedies with George Clooney. It got great pacing (which is rare for the Coens), the mandatory silly characters, and absurd situations based on actual human vices and relatable problems of our world. The film is dressed as a proper spy flick, but the characters are just too stupid to act it out as the audience would expect.

George Clooney’s marvelous arts and crafts work has the most impact, but I was hoping they slowly built up tension before the reveal.

Toxic fools and weak-willed straightmen. Typical Coen recipe.
The plot is too convoluted though and not told in an interesting way (e.g. if the entire narrative was told in media res from Agent Palmer to J.K. Simmons' character with flashbacks). The runtime is too long for the story at hand which could easily fit in a TV episode.

What on earth was this? I have not the slightest idea what I watched there, but that is probably exactly what the writers wanted to achieve. Sadly, I couldn't relate to any of the characters or to anything at all. Not sure if that also what the writers intended.