Talkie Zoo: BURN AFTER READING

I watched it. Ok, there's not a lot more to say about it, really. Burn After Reading (R; 2008) is a misleading title, since nothing is in the movie that remotely resembles any kind of secret documents. The fact is, the movie is about nothing more than a couple of health club trainers who stumble upon a disk, inadvertently left behind by one person but the trainers thought it belonged to a top US official.

They assume everything in it is some kind of deep government secret, when in fact, it's nothing more than the memoirs of the official and there's no security information at all on it. This pair of trainers decides to try to sell the disk so the female can have some cosmetic surgery and the male, well, he is just goofy enough to think he'll get a nice cut from the money, too.

The plot descends from the beginning and I found the characters to be completely unbelievable and shallow. They ran the gamut from someone who lived in a mansion to someone who lived in a manufactured home. I have yet to be convinced that this film showed a "new side" to the veteran actors that were in it, namely George Clooney and Brad Pitt. I think it was a mistake for them to agree to make the movie. Mostly, the film was an excuse to use as much foul language and gratuitous violence as possible, and yet list it as a comedy.