Word: lindas
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...elbowed one of its veteran analysts--starchy, sulfur-mouthed Osborne Cox (John Malkovich)--out of the agency. In revenge, Osborne starts composing his memoirs, a computer disc of which falls into the hands of two gym employees: lovelorn Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and her goofball pal Chad Feldheimer (Pitt). Linda is having an affair with federal Marshal Harry Pfarrer (Clooney), who's also been servicing Osborne's icy wife (Tilda Swinton). When Chad and Linda contact Osborne to return the disc, Harry stumbles into the deal. Plot thickens; nooses tighten...
...Chad does have a plan. He's come across a disc containing Cox's notes toward a mem-wah, and he brings Linda into the notion of calling Cox to return the disc; maybe the grateful owner will give them a small reward. Cox misinterprets Chad's call as blackmail, and rears up to snort and neigh at the do-gooders. That brings Harry into the plot, and things devolve from there...
...McDormand's Linda Litzke, assistant manager at a D.C.-area gym, is at the opposite end of the esteem spectrum. Primally troubled by her sagging derriere, and by "a gut that swings back and forth in front of me like a shopping cart with a bent wheel," she obsesses on the plastic surgery she thinks will give her some kind of a life. The ruck of men she's found through online dating services don't offer much. One of them takes her to a movie comedy and doesn't laugh; to dinner and doesn't talk...
...final piece of this puzzling jigsaw is Linda's gym assistant Chad Feldheimer, played by Pitt with a blithe goofball goodness. Outfitted in Spandex, and getting around with a walk that suggests less a guest on Dancing With the Stars than a heretofore unclassified creature on Animal Planet, Chad-Brad is the least troubled character in the film. He's never thought hard enough to consider how other people might think of him; he has no special dreams to defer, no ambitions to be crushed. For him, the unexamined life is the only one worth living...
...have the sinking feeling I've made Burn After Reading sound funnier than it is. The movie's glacial affectlessness, its remove from all these subpar schemers, left me cold and perplexed. I did appreciate the nicely modulated turns from Richard Jenkins as Linda's sweet-souled boss and J.K. Simmons as the head of the CIA. But for me, the surest laughs came from the portentous percussion in Carter Burwell's wonderful underscoring; it pile-drives an expectation of suspense that the film never delivers...