Mini-movie review: Burn After Reading

Mr. Mouse and I watched this last night because we are fans of several of the Coen brothers' movies (Fargo, Blood Simple, The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou) (no, we haven't seen No Country for Old Men yet - back off). Pluswhich, Mr. Mouse was very excited to see that BAR was only 95 minutes long: he much prefers 90 minute movies because he can generally manage to stay awake that long. That being said, I sort of feel as though the brothers' were stretching to get ninety minutes' worth of movie out of this one. It seemed like it was an early draft of a Coen brothers' movie, but they decided they didn't want to write it any more and just went straight to filming. While I liked the individual performances well enough, the film was ultimately unsatisfying. Nothing was wrapped up at the end; we were told what happened to the various moronic characters but we weren't shown what happened, and I believe that in film and television, showing is almost always better than telling.

Mr. Mouse's final reaction as the credits rolled: "Eh." But at least he stayed awake.