AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
The new Coen brothers picture, "Burn After Reading," is a very black comedy set in a blanched, austere-looking Washington, D.C.--an uninspiring and uncomfortable place in which everyone betrays everyone else, and the emotional tone veers from icy politeness to spitting rage and back again. "Burn After Reading" has plenty of momentum--short, tight-knit scenes of people arguing, driving, screwing, fighting--and, if you listen hard, you may hear echoes of a portentous old Capitol Hill drama like "Advise and Consent." But those echoes are stifled by a farce plot so bleak and unfunny that it freezes your responses after about forty-five minutes. The characters--Washington ...