Blu-ray Review: Gravity (2013)

Now Available to Own


 

Photo Slideshow  

Although it was the silence of space that originally soothed Sandra Bullock’s brainy doctor turned astronaut Ryan Stone during her first week-long mission to install a system meant for hospital use into the Hubble Telescope, after her crew’s explorer is hit by a large amount of fast traveling debris and she loses audible contact with Houston, silence is the last sound that she wants to hear.

Initially thrust into a free-fall, spinning desperately out of the line of sight of her team, although she’s soon secured to a tether attached to the experienced, fast-thinking veteran shuttle pilot Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), the two try to remain both practical and level-headed while evaluating the insurmountable obstacles and major unknowns they face, after learning they’re the only two crew members left alive in space.

With their rocket left irreparably damaged by the space-storm of debris and with no outside guidance to tell them which nearby space stations may be left standing and/or where they can find if not a return flight than at least shelter until a rescue mission can be staged, the two race against time, fate, and a severely dwindling oxygen supply to survive.

And as Ryan faces overwhelming odds time and again throughout Gravity, she begins to grow in her response to such a harrowing trial, moving throughout the course of the film from a damsel in distress to a woman who winds up having to rely on an inner strength she didn’t know she had to save herself.

A monumental achievement not only on a technical level (given the audacious cinematographic effects that make it difficult to believe this was actually shot on a green screen and not on some sort of top secret moviemaking mission to space), Gravity is also mesmerizing for how deftly it tells its deceptively simple story so incredibly well.

Offering a rare female-centric character arc that could have honestly just as easily been played by either gender (in the same vein as Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking space horror classic Alien), Gravity is heightened so much more by the performance of Sandra Bullock.

Reminding us once again why we fell in love with her in Speed with another emotionally riveting rollercoaster tale of high-stakes action-driven survival, when Stone gets into the driver’s seat once again to put her fate in her own hands, in addition to getting a sense of Speed déjà vu, it’s impossible not to watch it and realize how far Bullock’s come as an actress.

Completely charismatic in what is at times an almost silent film (in terms of dialogue), we see in Stone all of the hopes, fears, regrets and frustrations of a woman we might recognize in ourselves and it’s a truly moving turn that makes Gravity that much more life-affirming and empowering – particularly so for women.

Letting her guard down completely, Bullock shows us the flaws, humor, charm, sadness and strength of a woman who is in the midst of the five stages of grief both personally and professionally.

In addition to the emergency situation that keeps spiraling out of proportion in space, we learn shortly into the picture that Stone is also in the midst of the same process of grief on a personal level as she confesses to Kowalski that she’d lost a young child in an accident that – like matter hurdling through the atmosphere – had happened in the blink of an eye.

While we initially meet her as a woman simply going through the motions in her life, suddenly she’s forced to ask herself if she really wants to give up or keep going as an existential yet physical manifestation of her emotional journey

A brilliantly written, understated, metaphor-laden script that – like J.C. Chandor’s All is Lost invites you to attach your own meaning onto it – one very interesting example of the writers' creativity in carrying out the theme of rebirth is in Ryan’s confession that in America, she would spend any time she wasn’t working driving since that’s where she was when she got the tragic news.

And sure enough, from the small rover-type space pods to the jet-pack she’s tethered to, she’s driving once again in space – taking part in one such activity that had been described as a “Sunday drive” by Kowalski before she must actually attempt to take it upon herself to set a destination. Likewise, it’s also fascinating when she reveals her fear that in training she was never able to stop or safely land the small rover vehicles, crashing every time – as if to say she wasn’t ready to stop driving yet until she knew she must.

Her last name alone also speaks volumes as it’s a stumble on a rock (or a stone) that had killed her daughter and sure enough, it’s a rock-like storm of space debris that sets the events in motion, suggesting the level of guilt she’d had been experiencing internally before she must put herself back into motion.

While I can only imagine how unbelievable the film looks in 3D, Warner Brothers’ mind-blowingly gorgeous Blu-ray does not disappoint, especially for those with home theater rooms complete with a big screen television (of at least 40 plus inches) and heightened home theater sound bars or speaker systems to bring every bar of the score to every roar of an engine to life.

The type of film that benefits from post-cinema discussion with friends, Gravity is a highly recommended addition to your home library. And although it’s loaded with amazing special features that show you the massive amount of work that went into Cuaron’s four-year long opus, walking you through various sequences of the film from one department to the next (although unfortunately not the destruction of the International Space Station), one of the strongest assets in addition to an extra Ultraviolet Digital HD copy of the film is a short film by Jonas Cuaron.

Giving you the other side of Ryan Stone’s radio transmission by bringing you into Greenland to see what life is like for a fisherman who’s caught between joy and grief himself, it’s a beautiful addition that deepens the experience of the feature presentation. Furthermore, it adds extra meaning to one all-important scene where – once again in another evolution of character defined by plot – Stone discovered how much she needed others at last and was so glad to hear something other than the sound of silence as humanity translates regardless of language once Stone makes an effort to reach out and let herself be heard.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Three Kings (1999)

Now Available to Own

“Are we shooting people or what?” The sheer confusion and utter insanity of war embodied in the sardonic query posed by first class Army Reserve Sergeant Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), which opens David O. Russell's screwball soldier boy heist movie immediately sets the tone of what's to come.

It's a pitch-perfect first line of dialogue in a year of enviably brilliant screenplays from American Beauty to Magnolia to Being John Malkovich and in 1999's prolific year where creative, thought-provoking masterpieces were pouring into the multiplex like rain in Seattle, the fact that we can instantly recall those words eleven years later speaks volumes.

Nonetheless, at the same time, we were overwhelmed and damn near spoiled by theatrical greatness the likes we haven't seen very often in recent years of titles that we usually randomly wind up adding to our Top 10 list largely by lack of suitable options. Thus, it's unfortunate that aside from critical praise including earning a major champion in Roger Ebert, Three Kings didn't receive the attention it deserved in a crowded twelve months of unforgettable pictures.

While overall the year belonged to Sam Mendes and Alan Ball's equally sardonic, satirical Beauty, ironically Kings was eclipsed in the arty scene by the efforts of one of the film's stars – Spike Jonze's own instant cult favorite Being John Malkovich.

And after American soldiers returned to Iraq following the horrific attacks of 9/11, Warner Brothers' acclaimed Kings began drawing a new wave of interest from fans. Particularly, it attracted those looking to address parallels in the both wars in tandem with the fact that both conflicts were overseen by presidents from the same family as well as the increasing concern that like the Gulf War, we were predominantly fighting for oil as addressed in Kings.

Yet because of sensitivity and controversy surrounding the situation, it seemed that the thing we needed more than anything in order to step back and really look closer (to use a lesson from Mendes' Beauty) with regard to Russell's Kings was time, making this recent Blu-ray release one of extraordinary pre-election urgency.

Honestly, this is particularly vital in assessing not just the confusion, overwhelming complexities and acknowledgment that nothing is black and white but to a larger extent in understanding just how eerie it is in retrospect to dissect the way that history just keeps repeating itself whether or not “we're shooting people or what.”

And although it's not bashful about its politics, Russell's movie works well on a number of levels, best perhaps as first and foremost an old-fashioned '60s testosterone fueled male camaraderie outsider picture of men on a mission.

But instead of presenting us with a Kelly's Heroes ensemble consisting of a Dirty Dozen or Magnificent Seven large number, we tag along with a small group of soldiers played by George Clooney's embittered nearly retired Major, Wahlberg's Troy and his friend Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) along with Troy's sycophantic sidekick Conrad (Jonze).

The core trio comprise the eponymous three kings, in an admittedly less than religious but extremely witty interpretation of the tale in reverse as unlike their namesake's role of bearing gifts after traveling afar, their intent is to take ill-gotten goods back for themselves in the form of Saddam Hussein's stolen Kuwaiti gold.

In addition to the Kubrickian Strangelove infused larger than life situations where messages masquerade as humor, Russell manages to satirize the media, most specifically via actress Nora Dunn's thinly disguised take on Christiane Amanpour, whose career at CNN you may recall was solidified for her Gulf War coverage.

To push this agenda of the filter of news coverage even further on a stylistic, subtle level, the look of the film is incredibly surreal as Kings' team bleached the film stock, thereby desaturating color in order to bring the war home to viewers the way that we first saw it in newsprint to trippy effect.

Piecing together different elements in a genre blending quilt of madness and freewheeling creativity, what begins as an adventurous buddy comedy morphs into something much more humanistic and troubling. Since they are after all supposed to be heroic, predictably the men's pursuit of stolen fortune is usurped by the reality of the “New Iraq” following the conclusion of the war as the American soldiers aren't able to take up arms against Saddam's loyal fighters who kill innocents in cold blood before their eyes.

Ultimately, they face a tough moral decision of whether or not to get involved without the government say-so because as both human beings and soldiers they just can't witness such atrocities without response. However, around this point, Kings begins to grow slightly incredulous as it moves from a smaller scale war film into something resembling a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western in the vein of the Kurosawa remake A Fistful of Dollars in yet another example of Russell's growing tapestry of genre interplay.

Nonetheless, ultimately its temporary loss of focus and direction in the last act is forgiven by the overall visceral impact of the work when the credits roll. Impossible to pin down, Kings is a towering achievement and the type of film that the abysmal, pointless Clooney vehicle The Men Who Stare at Goats proved cannot be duplicated.

However, given Russell's fascination with visualizing the damage a bullet causes on the inside of the body rather than through fake blood on the outside, Kings is not a film for the squeamish or to be watched while dining. But just like the insanity of wondering whether or not to fire a gun from the start, these explosive sequences are vital to illuminate what really goes on after the squeeze of a trigger.

Although his disagreement and fights with the director were widely publicized and debated in the media, Kings boasts a tremendous breakout performance by Clooney whose turn in the film solidified his potential as a leading man on the big screen as opposed to just his small screen work on TV's E.R..

And fortunately, the movie shines in an exceptional Blu-ray transfer wherein the explosive high definition sound rockets through all of your home theatre speakers and likewise ensures that you won't miss Russell's incredibly penned memorable lines. For the time has never been better to take another trip through Russell's royally twisted Kings to appreciate the genius hidden like Saddam's gold under the facade of a war-torn buddy heist action dramady.


Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  

FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

New on DVD and Blu-Ray for the Week of 12/21/08

Jen's Pick of the Week:
The Duchess

American Teen

Burn After Reading

Death Sentence (Blu-ray)

The Duchess

Eagle Eye

Ghost Town

Savage Grace

The Women

DVD Review: Burn After Reading (2008)

Scheming Onto Blu-Ray, DVD & Video on Demand
12/21/08

Experience the Full Dossier: Uncover the Screenplay, Soundtrack & More

Recently nominated for two Golden Globes including Best Picture-- Musical or Comedy and Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for its star Frances McDormand, Universal Studios and Focus Features release Joel and Ethan Coen's wild mid-life crisis comedy disguised as a spy caper with the 12/21 DVD and Blu-ray debut of Burn After Reading. Par for the course for the camera shy and introspective Coen Brothers, the two provide a bare minimum of video interview footage in the three bonus featurettes but it's still a riot to hear them tell tales out of school about what it's like to turn handsome A-list stars Brad Pitt and George Clooney into first class dorks. Before we jump directly into the dossier of extras, I'll reprint the original review from September.

Burn After Reading

Public Service Announcement:

Don’t bring highly classified data to the gym.

Directors:

Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

Last year in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Oscar nominee Casey Affleck stole the entire film away from his leading man, Brad Pitt. One year later, it’s Brad Pitt’s turn to steal some thunder of his own in Burn After Reading from Focus Features (quickly turning into the new Miramax).

And that he does and more in the newest film from the Coen Brothers — managing to nail every scene he’s in, get the most laughs and keep us wanting more of his character as opposed to the assorted band of oddballs and amoral madmen assembled in the filmmakers’ nihilistically absurdist take on espionage comedy.

Coming off the heels of last year’s brilliant but bleak Best Picture winner No Country For Old Men, which David Edelstein noted Joel and Ethan Coen wrote at the same time as Burn, I wish I could say it was the antidote to the inevitable and pessimistic gloom that pervaded in their film about a country that’s hard on people. However, instead of the bright, cheery comedy advertised in one of the year’s best cut trailers (both red and green band), we get a comedy that’s more unsettling than laugh-out-loud funny despite some truly inventive work by Pitt and Frances McDormand as two ambitious gym employees who try to sell top secret CIA data from a dropped computer disc.

Anxious first to try and get a “Good Samaritan” type of reward for ensuring the security of the “highly classified shit” they’ve discovered, soon their phone call to former CIA employee Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) turns into blackmail. Although it’s McDormand who makes the threat, no doubt their case wasn’t helped by Pitt’s incessant explanation about the “security of your shit” which understandably frustrates Cox, whom — awakened in the middle of the night — has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

And why should he? Although he’s been working on his memoirs after impulsively quitting the agency in a hilarious confrontational beginning as he’s officially downgraded for a drinking problem, it’s his unfaithful wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) who compiled the data on the disc as a preemptive strike before serving him with divorce papers. Unbeknownst to either of them, their moves are all being watched as the plot grows increasingly complex and chaotic when the link between the two stories — the kinky governmental employee Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) becomes involved — begins sleeping alternately with Swinton’s Katie and McDormand’s Linda Litzke. And when Osborne proves to be less than cooperative, Linda, desperate to have plastic surgery and oblivious to the earnest affection of her good-natured boss Ted (Richard Jenkins), leads Pitt’s Chad further into an international debacle as they try to sell the “secret shit” to the Russians.

You’ll notice I’m including Pitt’s phrase of choice throughout as indeed, his character is quintessentially Coen; more specifically, he’s funny as hell, fond of vague repetition of words and phrases like “oh my God” as he runs down a hallway or “shit” which he uses as a noun, adjective, and verb. And while he no doubt engages in unscrupulous behavior and is the instigator of the inevitable bloody violence that follows (it’s a Coen Brothers film after all), aside from Ted the human puppy dog, Chad is the most likable one of the bunch. Thus, much like Shakespeare’s Mercutio, he gets all the best lines, detracts from the film’s artistry, and one-ups Clooney (although they only share one fateful scene) at every turn, and unfortunately he’s the one who is used far too little throughout.

Meet Chad:

With an advertising campaign comprised of cool Saul Bass-styled posters echoing the classy spy films and Hollywood blockbusters of the late '50s and '60s (the lettering alone looks like Bass’s work on Vertigo), it’s evident that like No Country was sort of the Coen version of a western, this is their version of a spy comedy, yet it’s surprisingly devoid of humor. And that’s quite a shame as again, it had one of the best ad campaigns of 2008.

View the Trailer:

Even though initially one doesn’t think “funny” and the Coen Brothers, especially given their last film, they’ve definitely aced the genre before with not just their most-referenced cult hit The Big Lebowski but also in one of the most ridiculously hysterical chase scenes of the 1980s as Nicolas Cage tries to outrun authorities like a live action cartoon in Raising Arizona. Moreover, they’ve even inserted humor in the unlikeliest of situations from Fargo to No Country, yet when they attempt a pure comedy but don’t go all out in the execution by muddling it with nihilistic and brutal bursts of action, the results have been mixed.

Like The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers, the timing of this one is just plain off and it took a good twenty minutes to garner one genuine laugh, after Malkovich’s grand confrontation which opens the film. Although some audience members did chuckle, even at the oddest of moments as one character slices another in the head with an axe, it all seemed to be as half-hearted as the direction, more in appreciation of the directors themselves than what was actually served up to audiences. This being said, I wasn’t unprepared, knowing fully how “out there” they can go-- having seen, analyzed, and appreciated even some of their strangest works such as Barton Fink and the wood-chipper finale of Fargo. As a film host and critic I have probably explained, championed, and defended their work to friends, audiences, and strangers more than most.

And while granted that Clooney is no doubt familiar with their brand of humor — having done so phenomenally well with it in O Brother, Where Art Thou -- it’s ultimately his extremely unpleasant and repugnant character along with an under-written and icy Tilda Swinton (Clooney’s Oscar winning costar who, along with Tom Wilkinson stole his own film last year, Michael Clayton, away from him again) that bogs down the plot of Burn as a whole.

It takes far too long to introduce us to not only Pitt’s Chad but McDormand’s middle-aged Linda. Tired of half-heartedly sleeping with married losers she meets online after a dull day at work, she has made the foolish and entirely Hollywood-like decision that she’s gone as far as she can with her current body and has decided she wants to improve her looks with four drastic plastic surgeries. Obviously a commentary of McDormand’s profession no doubt cooked up by McDormand and her husband Joel Coen, this plot alone would’ve helped add to the humor and we feel shortchanged once again when, just like a final description of events featuring Clooney’s character, McDormand’s character finally finds a solution to her problems but it’s all discussed by a CIA operative played by Juno’s dad (J.K. Simmons).

If they truly wanted to make us laugh, we would’ve seen these events with our own eyes, rather than be “told” what happened and it’s not like they were overstaying their welcome with a roughly ninety-five minute running time. Ultimately, the Coens end Burn with the same type of similar dissatisfying aftertaste that became one of the biggest criticisms of last year’s abrupt end to No Country. And possibly to fix this, they could’ve found a way to delete the Clooney and Swinton plot altogether and just give us more of “The Chad” (to quote Charlie’s Angels) so we could relish in his childlike awe upon trying to discover all the “highly classified shit” he can get his hands on.

DVD Review: Bonus Features

Describing their tragicomedy as being essentially focused on the CIA and physical fitness and what happens "when those two worlds collide," in "Finding the Burn," the Coen Brothers discuss the film's inception as a film in which everyone is undergoing a bit of a midlife crisis.

Joking that "it's our Tony Scott Bourne Identity kind of movie without the explosions," that marks a welcome return to their "underrated" first Washington D.C. film made when they were tweens, Joel and Ethan Coen remind us of their status as filmmaking's resident mad geniuses and men of very few words who seem to know as the cast frequently explains-- precisely what they want at all times.

Although George Clooney laughs that they're so skilled at ego massaging that they make actors think they are actually contributing ideas and are willing to try letting them do their own thing, ultimately it's a Coen film after all and one they seem to have already chopped (under their mutual editing pseudonym of Roderick Jaynes) long before either one yelled "Action!"

In a funny analysis of Clooney's third moronic character that finds him returning to Coen land for his idiot trilogy, "Welcome Back George," (which goes hand in hand with Clooney's Intolerable Cruelty and O Brother, Where Art Thou? the filmmakers, Clooney, and the costumer all relish in what a treat it was to make the debonair leading man into a high-waisted jean wearing, bad beard sporting loser but one of the most interesting-- yet still far too brief extras-- celebrated the entire cast.

In "DC Insiders Run Amock," the Coens discuss their goal to write roles for those they either knew or longed to work with (such as Swinton, Pitt, and Malkovich) and it's great fun to see McDormand roll her eyes in recollection of her first read-through which described her character's introduction in the script consisting of "close up on a woman's ass. Bare. Pale. Middle aged."

While her wardrobe was inspired by post-makeover Linda Tripp and there's some great production insights about turning New York into Georgetown for the shoot and transforming the cast, it was also a treat to hear that even an Oscar winning pro like McDormand admit that on her first day shooting alongside the scene-stealing Brad Pitt, she couldn't remember any of her lines as he continuously cracked her up.

Although Pitt is largely absent-- perhaps because of his incessant shooting schedule and upcoming epics like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which finds him re-teaming with his Fight Club director David Fincher) and we wish there would've been a feature length commentary, it's still a remarkable transfer from film to DVD with crystal clear picture and sound that was so impressive, for a moment, I mistook it for Blu-ray.

And true to form, leaving us to interpret just what exactly we all learned (or rather what we didn't) in a nod to J.K. Simmons line near the end of the film, it's only fitting that the Coens remain typically aloof, answering just enough for us to get a glimpse of insight but not so much that everything is spelled out which wouldn't be right for a Coen movie or a spy movie and especially for one that's a combination of the two.

Burn After Reading, Righteous Kill & The Women Links

Hello,

Due to an astute Feedblitz subscriber, it came to my attention that last Friday's new theatrical release e-mail didn't get sent out to everyone. While I'm not sure why that happened, I apologize for the inconvenience. And-- better late than never-- below you can find the links to my most recent reviews of the biggest movies at the multiplex.

Burn After Reading

Righteous Kill

The Women

Additionally, I'd also included a new DVD to Friday's publication so here's that link as well:

The Patriots (1994)

Thanks for reading and enjoy the movies!

- Jen

Burn After Reading

Public Service Announcement:
Don’t bring highly classified data to the gym.

Last year in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Oscar nominee Casey Affleck stole the entire film away from his leading man, Brad Pitt. One year later, it’s Brad Pitt’s turn to steal some thunder of his own in Burn After Reading from Focus Features (quickly turning into the new Miramax).

And that he does and more in the newest film from the Coen Brothers — managing to nail every scene he’s in, get the most laughs and keep us wanting more of his character as opposed to the assorted band of oddballs and amoral madmen assembled in the filmmakers’ nihilistically absurdist take on espionage comedy.

Coming off the heels of last year’s brilliant but bleak Best Picture winner No Country For Old Men, which David Edelstein noted Joel and Ethan Coen wrote at the same time as Burn, I wish I could say it was the antidote to the inevitable and pessimistic gloom that pervaded in their film about a country that’s hard on people. However, instead of the bright, cheery comedy advertised in one of the year’s best cut trailers (both red and green band), we get a comedy that’s more unsettling than laugh-out-loud funny despite some truly inventive work by Pitt and Frances McDormand as two ambitious gym employees who try to sell top secret CIA data from a dropped computer disc.

Anxious first to try and get a “Good Samaritan” type of reward for ensuring the security of the “highly classified shit” they’ve discovered, soon their phone call to former CIA employee Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) turns into blackmail. Although it’s McDormand who makes the threat, no doubt their case wasn’t helped by Pitt’s incessant explanation about the “security of your shit” which understandably frustrates Cox, whom — awakened in the middle of the night — has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

And why should he? Although he’s been working on his memoirs after impulsively quitting the agency in a hilarious confrontational beginning as he’s officially downgraded for a drinking problem, it’s his unfaithful wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) who compiled the data on the disc as a preemptive strike before serving him with divorce papers. Unbeknownst to either of them, their moves are all being watched as the plot grows increasingly complex and chaotic when the link between the two stories — the kinky governmental employee Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) becomes involved — begins sleeping alternately with Swinton’s Katie and McDormand’s Linda Litzke. And when Osborne proves to be less than cooperative, Linda, desperate to have plastic surgery and oblivious to the earnest affection of her good-natured boss Ted (Richard Jenkins), leads Pitt’s Chad further into an international debacle as they try to sell the “secret shit” to the Russians.

You’ll notice I’m including Pitt’s phrase of choice throughout as indeed, his character is quintessentially Coen; more specifically, he’s funny as hell, fond of vague repetition of words and phrases like “oh my God” as he runs down a hallway or “shit” which he uses as a noun, adjective, and verb. And while he no doubt engages in unscrupulous behavior and is the instigator of the inevitable bloody violence that follows (it’s a Coen Brothers film after all), aside from Ted the human puppy dog, Chad is the most likable one of the bunch. Thus, much like Shakespeare’s Mercutio, he gets all the best lines, detracts from the film’s artistry, and one-ups Clooney (although they only share one fateful scene) at every turn, and unfortunately he’s the one who is used far too little throughout.

Meet Chad:

With an advertising campaign comprised of cool Saul Bass-styled posters echoing the classy spy films and Hollywood blockbusters of the late '50s and '60s (the lettering alone looks like Bass’s work on Vertigo), it’s evident that like No Country was sort of the Coen version of a western, this is their version of a spy comedy, yet it’s surprisingly devoid of humor. And that’s quite a shame as again, it had one of the best ad campaigns of 2008.

View the Trailer:

Even though initially one doesn’t think “funny” and the Coen Brothers, especially given their last film, they’ve definitely aced the genre before with not just their most-referenced cult hit The Big Lebowski but also in one of the most ridiculously hysterical chase scenes of the 1980s as Nicolas Cage tries to outrun authorities like a live action cartoon in Raising Arizona. Moreover, they’ve even inserted humor in the unlikeliest of situations from Fargo to No Country, yet when they attempt a pure comedy but don’t go all out in the execution by muddling it with nihilistic and brutal bursts of action, the results have been mixed.

Like The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers, the timing of this one is just plain off and it took a good twenty minutes to garner one genuine laugh, after Malkovich’s grand confrontation which opens the film. Although some audience members did chuckle, even at the oddest of moments as one character slices another in the head with an axe, it all seemed to be as half-hearted as the direction, more in appreciation of the directors themselves than what was actually served up to audiences. This being said, I wasn’t unprepared, knowing fully how “out there” they can go-- having seen, analyzed, and appreciated even some of their strangest works such as Barton Fink and the wood-chipper finale of Fargo. As a film host and critic I have probably explained, championed, and defended their work to friends, audiences, and strangers more than most.

And while granted that Clooney is no doubt familiar with their brand of humor — having done so phenomenally well with it in O Brother, Where Art Thou -- it’s ultimately his extremely unpleasant and repugnant character along with an under-written and icy Tilda Swinton (Clooney’s Oscar winning costar who, along with Tom Wilkinson stole his own film last year, Michael Clayton, away from him again) that bogs down the plot of Burn as a whole.

It takes far too long to introduce us to not only Pitt’s Chad but McDormand’s middle-aged Linda. Tired of half-heartedly sleeping with married losers she meets online after a dull day at work, she has made the foolish and entirely Hollywood-like decision that she’s gone as far as she can with her current body and has decided she wants to improve her looks with four drastic plastic surgeries. Obviously a commentary of McDormand’s profession no doubt cooked up by McDormand and her husband Joel Coen, this plot alone would’ve helped add to the humor and we feel shortchanged once again when, just like a final description of events featuring Clooney’s character, McDormand’s character finally finds a solution to her problems but it’s all discussed by a CIA operative played by Juno’s dad (J.K. Simmons).

If they truly wanted to make us laugh, we would’ve seen these events with our own eyes, rather than be “told” what happened and it’s not like they were overstaying their welcome with a roughly ninety-five minute running time. Ultimately, the Coens end Burn with the same type of similar dissatisfying aftertaste that became one of the biggest criticisms of last year’s abrupt end to No Country. And possibly to fix this, they could’ve found a way to delete the Clooney and Swinton plot altogether and just give us more of “The Chad” (to quote Charlie’s Angels) so we could relish in his childlike awe upon trying to discover all the “highly classified shit” he can get his hands on.