Burn After Reading

All detective movies, even the comedies, follow the same formula. A small-time guy is sucked into a big-time situation. At first, the detective thinks his goal is simple: collect some money, photograph an infidelity, track down a ditzy ingénue. He has no interest in the big picture. But the original task turns out to be more difficult than he imagined. In fact, merely extracting himself from the situation will require him to understand it, and his quest to do that expands his knowledge of how complex the world is and how depraved people can be. Ultimately, he finds himself the focal point of a high-stakes battle that affects many people, and shoulders him with a great moral responsibility that he doesn’t want.

The crux of the humor in Burn After Reading is that Read the rest of this entry »