The Justice

While the ensemble is uniformly strong, it is Pitt who absolutely steals the show as a dense personal trainer. Pitt's comedic talents have been hinted at in the Ocean's series and in Fight Club, but he has never been as outright uproarious as he is Burn After Reading. He navigates the difficult territory between complete believability and the realm of over-the-top. While later this year Pitt will return to more serious roles in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, here Pitt shows that he is an equally talented comedic actor as he is a dramatic one.

While Burn After Reading might feel like a step backward for the Coen brothers after last year's Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, it should be viewed instead as a welcome return to the comedy of idiots they are capable of carrying out so successfully. And, if Burn doesn't live up to Coen classics like The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona, it certainly manages to surpass their more recent comedies The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty. What those films lacked in appealing characters, this film makes up for with personalities that you care about even as you laugh at their follies. The film also boasts a number of classic Coen flourishes, from its lack of a lesson to be learned to the violence that comes almost arbitrarily and without warning. Finally, Burn stands as a reminder to the tremendous writing prowess of the Coens, who once again show that they are some of the best screenwriters working today. Although Burn After Reading isn't quite a classic, it is still a ton of fun and well worth seeing.

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