Okay, I’ll start by saying I’m not supremely familiar with the Coen brothers work. I’ve seen my fair share of their movies, but I couldn’t give you the full rundown of each and what the plots were without consulting IMDB. But my initial impression is just “So the Coen brothers made their Oceans movie.” I admit it’s not a perfect analog as the Coens tend to use their cast of characters and this is not everyone in a single plot but kind of tangential connections of fate. That being said it really seemed like Burn After Reading was a move made by the cast and Coens just to have some fun and hang out.
My second point, the totally false marketing campaign. The trailers really made it out to be some sort of hijinks filled comedy. But it really wasn’t. There were a few funny moments to be sure, but nothing you didn’t see in the trailers for the most part.
It’s not really worth going into the plot, suffice to say people are greedy, people want things, people betray other people, shit happens. I thought all the characters were pretty much caricatures rather than real characters with any kind of depth. I didn’t think the actors played anything other than the most obvious bits of some of their previous works.
All in all a fairly boring film.