BURN AFTER READING, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton. In cinemas 17th October 2008.
CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), fired and disgruntled, decides to write a memoir. His wife, disgruntled herself and secretly planning divorce, loads the manuscript along with his financial information onto a disc which is inadvertently left in the locker room at her gym.
The computer disc, with its important-sounding references to the CIA and its obscure numbers, looks like a treasure-trove of government secrets to assistant gym manager Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), and her best friend, trainer Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt). They decide to sell the information to the highest bidder. Feeling the sands of time running through her sagging figure, Linda needs the money for a battery of plastic surgeries.
She becomes even more determined once she starts seeing secret service agent Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a man who dotes on his wife but whose sex addiction has sent him cruising the internet for dates. The compulsively womanizing Pfarrer, as it happens, is also carrying on an affair with the CIA analyst's wife. Things get complicated. The characters are only looking for love, or plastic surgery, or their manuscript back, but none of them will get what they bargained for.
Click on the link above for a featurette on Pitt's character.
