Ethan Coen
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With a few notable exceptions—Marge in "Fargo," the Dude in "The Big Lebowski," Tommy Lee Jones's mournful sheriff in "No Country for Old Men," Billy Bob Thornton in "The Man Who Wasn't There"—most of their characters have the bold outlines of cartoon figures that might have been devised by a combination of Tex Avery and George Grosz.
Sour candy...redeemed by its humor and its clever construction, harkening back to the relatively optimistic crime comedy Fargo.
McDormand's character has a few moments reminiscent of her "Fargo" sheriff, but finally she's just desperate and pathetic, while Swinton is exquisitely stonyhearted.
Perhaps in an homage to Fargo, there is graphic senseless unexpected violence.
As with the much-laureled "No Country for Old Men," the Coens seem to be Mixmastering themes and elements of their earlier films; there are traces of "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski" and "Blood Simple" in the DNA of "Burn After Reading."
Here she channels a little of the go-getter determination of her state trooper in " Fargo ."
Her and Harry’s laughter isn’t sweet, though, but off-puttingly exaggerated — just like Joel McCrea’s in the Sullivan’s Travels sequence it nods to.
Raising Arizona (1987)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced Drive-Away Dolls (2024), Burn After Reading (2008)
Characters Themes Dialogue
And you could call Qualley’s Jamie a Coen archetype who goes all the way back to the Holly Hunter character in “Raising Arizona” — the Southern chatterbox, spewing her ironically literate folk wisdom. (“Raising Arizona” was the first of many movies in which the Coens built characters around the joke “Look! This drawling hick is actually smart!”)
While the film has echoes of past Coen Brothers films, especially Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Burn After Reading, it also feels fresh.
Qualley’s performance — the syrup-thick hillbilly accent wrapped around Byzantine dialogue — can’t help but recall “Raising Arizona,” the Coen brothers’ brilliant 1987 film. This, as Jamie might say, ain’t that (though she would use a lot more words to say it).
Stitch the pair together, and you’d probably end up with the kind of farcical melancholy that’s become the Coen trademark, delivered in various doses across the likes of Raising Arizona, A Serious Man, and Burn After Reading.
…it works hard to serve up lashings of black humor, in the tradition of older Coen Brothers movies like Raising Arizona, but you can hear the wheels whirring behind every joke.
A tangy palate-cleanser after the Academy Award-winning “No Country for Old Men,” Ethan and Joel Coen’s “Burn After Reading” is a throwback to such Coen-sian comic gems as “Raising Arizona,” “The Big Lebowski” and “Fargo.”
I could not help but compare it to the work of the Coens, especially No Country for Old Men (2007) and Burn After Reading (2008). Like the former, Eddington is a stark look at the contemporary American Southwest, and it shares with the latter a cadre of disaffected rubes improvising schemes as they go along.
…strange little amalgam of movies like No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Burn After Reading…
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced Burn After Reading (2008)
Characters Themes
With a few notable exceptions—Marge in "Fargo," the Dude in "The Big Lebowski," Tommy Lee Jones's mournful sheriff in "No Country for Old Men," Billy Bob Thornton in "The Man Who Wasn't There"—most of their characters have the bold outlines of cartoon figures that might have been devised by a combination of Tex Avery and George Grosz.
As with the much-laureled "No Country for Old Men," the Coens seem to be Mixmastering themes and elements of their earlier films; there are traces of "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski" and "Blood Simple" in the DNA of "Burn After Reading."
Its madcap tone recalls Coen projects like The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou? , although it doesn’t reach the heights of sublime absurdity that those movies (especially Lebowski ) achieved.
A tangy palate-cleanser after the Academy Award-winning “No Country for Old Men,” Ethan and Joel Coen’s “Burn After Reading” is a throwback to such Coen-sian comic gems as “Raising Arizona,” “The Big Lebowski” and “Fargo.”
So instead, let me just stick to the easy praise: Burn After Reading is easily the funniest film by Joel and Ethan Coen since The Big Lebowski ten years ago, and generally speaking feels more like their old stuff than anything else they've done in that decade.
Miller's Crossing (1990)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced Drive-Away Dolls (2024), Burn After Reading (2008)
Themes Plot
In 2021, Joel Coen made the serious, black-and-white Shakespearean adaptation The Tragedy Of Macbeth, echoing the dramatic tones and themes of No Country For Old Men, Miller’s Crossing, and Blood Simple.
On the surface, the Coen Brothers’ output is easily divided between the comedic entries in the fraternal filmography (Raising Arizona; The Big Lebowski; Hail, Caesar; etc.) and their dramas (Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, Inside Llewyn Davis, etc.).
The Coens have often worked out their private sense of amusement and disdain onscreen: in the baffling gangster jargon and reversals of loyalty in “Miller’s Crossing”; in the bizarrely punitive disasters that beset the left-wing-prig screenwriter in “Barton Fink”; in the openmouthed idiocies of the three escaped cons in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
As in their best films--No Country for Old Men, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo--Burn After Reading asks what happens when the social contract breaks down (in this case, expectations of marital fidelity, stable employment, the return of lost property), and answers, as before, that chaos and violence follow.
The story, a Coen original, has some of the twistiness of a Fargo or Miller’s Crossing, but this time the criminals don’t even realize they’re initiating a crime until it’s too late.
With the exception of the unnamed city in Miller's Crossing, all of them are set in a specific time and place which have direct influence on the proceedings.
Humphrey Bogart famously said in “Casablanca” that “it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
(Comparisons to their stellar sad-sack black comedies like Burn After Reading and Fargo are inevitable.
But even if he's obviously imitating "Burn After Reading" (the Coens' worst film) and "Fargo" (possibly their best), putting a satire in Bay's hands is rather like presenting the keys of a stolen Lamborghini to a drunken teenager.
It’s Burn After Reading jacked up to be Bad Boys.
There are loose similarities between this movie and their hateful little farce, Burn After Reading, but the ludicrousness there is at least truly ludicrous.
I Care a Lot might be the most amoral, pitch-black comedy-thriller I’ve seen this side of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading .
The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Directed by Riley Stearns
influenced by Burn After Reading (2008)
Themes
Satires can paper over facile social criticisms with sheer, giddy nastiness and a high laugh-to-minute ratio; see, for example, the Coens’ vicious farce Burn After Reading (2008), which openly admits that it has no moral.
One Battle After Another (2025)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by Burn After Reading (2008)
Plot
…landing somewhere between the politics of Z, Burn After Reading, and, somehow, Southland Tales…
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced by Burn After Reading (2008), The Ladykillers (2004)
Visuals
Over the years they’ve perfected the art of onscreen death, and many of their most memorable moments involve sudden, unexpected violence: the woodchipper reveal in Fargo (1996); the bolt pistol murders in No Country for Old Men (2007); the Brad Pitt closet discovery in Burn After Reading (2008).
While the first short is firmly from the Coen school of storytelling that resulted in the likes of The Big Lebowski and Hail, Caesar (even boasting both films’ love of musical numbers), the second is more in like with the likes of Raising Arizona and Burn After Reading.
The central conceit here is one of incongruity, of Gene Autry type fused with the trigger-happy gore of late Peckinpah; it’s also the most typically Coen-esque of the films, with musical numbers in the style of O Brother and their recent Hail, Caesar! , paired with the pitch-black gunshot comedy of The Ladykillers and Burn After Reading.
The brothers have always ridden the strange and uncomfortable line between violence and humor ( Fargo is a prime example), and their use of death to induce both shock and laughter reached its apex in Burn After Reading, a film whose bizarre politics no longer seem to read as satire.
Quirkiness is very much a game played by The Cohen Brothers, whose films – ranging from No Country For Old Men to Burn After Reading – tend to feature dry and dark humor, punctuated by awkward and dramatic attitudes.
Almost all of their films – even the ones I would class as frivolous and self-indulgent (yes, I’m looking at you “Hail, Caesar!” and “Burn After Reading”) – have been feted, and most have earned their money back at the box office (some, such as “No Country for Old Men” and “True Grit,” even became bona fide hits).
Not since Arsenic and Old Lace has there been a movie that brushes so flippantly over the worst kind of human behavior and disposes of its characters with such antic indifference.
Tyree (Richard Jenkins, "The Visitor," "Burn After Reading") is even quieter than his son, totally wrapped up in his coin collection, and we immediately know he has similar challenges as Alan, but Savannah has the golden touch and engages him.
In a deeply touching and complex turn that raises above the usual filmic portrayal of mental disabilities, Richard Jenkins (2008's " Burn After Reading ") is outstanding.
In a comedy of errors explained (sort of) later on, a CD copy of Ozzie's autobiographical jabberwocky winds up in the possession of two dingbat employees of a gym called Hardbodies: Linda (Frances McDormand, married to Joel Coen), a Ms. Lonelyhearts frustrated in her quest for love and plastic surgery; and Chad (the previously stated Pitt), a dumb twit with vertiginous hair that's still only a third of the height of Pitt's über-pompadour in Johnny Suede .
Brad Pitt as McDormand's dense partner in extortion lets his frosted pompadour (recycled from the early '90s -- Johnny Suede to be exact) do most of the acting for him, though he's pretty funny when his character tries to suggest menace by cluelessly narrowing his eyes.
But though the narrative isn’t all that clever, it’s enough on which to hang a steady succession of amusing touches, from Malkovich’s rant on learning of his demotion through Clooney’s peculiar anniversary present for Sandy, McDormand’s conversation with an amazed cosmetics surgeon (Jeffrey DeMunn), Jenkin’s sad-eyed worship of Linda, and Pitt’s happy return to his “Johnny Suede” look and his engagingly flippant, goofily conspiratorial attitude.
Soderbergh seems to be aiming for the kind of knockabout kookiness of the Coen Brothers’ best films (Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski), but Logan Lucky is closer to the sneering attitude that slips into the worst of their work (Burn After Reading; O Brother, Where Art Thou?).
There’s a sidebar with an overserious FBI agent (Swank) that calls to mind the Coens’ Burn After Reading , and a bit at a beauty pageant for children that plays like a sweeter version of Little Miss Sunshine .
It’s “Masterminds” meets “Little Miss Sunshine,” with a heaping helping of Coen Brothers “Burn After Reading” contempt for its characters — every character, about whom the phrase “ignorant rural white trash” is never uttered, but implied.
In this sense the film, directed by Doug Liman, reflects the ideologies of the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading and David Michôd’s War Machine .
The supposed forces of goodness in the film are about as capable as the CIA numbskulls of the Coen Bros.’ Burn After Reading, which is to say they’re not competent to do much of anything except cause mayhem.
Slickly shot on location in Washington, D.C., and making great use of the district's landmarks, cinematography by the wonderfully resourceful Emmanuel Lubezki (2006's " Children of Men ") is ace.
With a few notable exceptions—Marge in "Fargo," the Dude in "The Big Lebowski," Tommy Lee Jones's mournful sheriff in "No Country for Old Men," Billy Bob Thornton in "The Man Who Wasn't There"—most of their characters have the bold outlines of cartoon figures that might have been devised by a combination of Tex Avery and George Grosz.
You can tell that this movie was a side project written at the same time as NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.It shares the themes of isolation, loneliness and its complete lack of faith in humanity.
Believe it or not, the gleefully nonsensical spy caper Burn After Reading is a mirror reflection of the Coen Brothers’ Oscar winner last year, No Country for Old Men .
As with the much-laureled "No Country for Old Men," the Coens seem to be Mixmastering themes and elements of their earlier films; there are traces of "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski" and "Blood Simple" in the DNA of "Burn After Reading."
True to form, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen have followed up 2007's Oscar-winning " No Country for Old Men " with a picture very different in tone and setting.
In general, the Coens dispose of the characters with the same careless speed that they used to dispose of Josh Brolin near the end of “No Country for Old Men.”
Murder—the more cold-blooded, the better—is usually a laugh line; anti-Semitic stereotypes were played for yocks in Barton Fink; lynching was a gag in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The Coens have often worked out their private sense of amusement and disdain onscreen: in the baffling gangster jargon and reversals of loyalty in “Miller’s Crossing”; in the bizarrely punitive disasters that beset the left-wing-prig screenwriter in “Barton Fink”; in the openmouthed idiocies of the three escaped cons in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
Their best movies, "No Country for Old Men" (2007), "Fargo" (1996), "Raising Arizona" (1987), and "Barton Fink" (1991) all have a strong sense of place and people.
Their characters pop off the screen with rapacious, doomed vitality, unforgettable suckers on a comic treadmill that's usually heading straight downhill, if not, in the case of "Barton Fink," to hell itself.
They followed their Cannes darling Barton Fink with the zany The Hudsucker Proxy, the Oscar recognition for Fargo yielded the stoner classic The Big Lebowski, and the willfully difficult, demanding The Man Who Wasn't There was quickly followed by the lightweight Intolerable Cruelty and a flimsy remake of The Ladykillers.