"Burn After Reading": The trades say yes! And no!

2008-08-27 20:00:01

The early reviews of the Coens' "Burn After Reading," which opens the Venice Film Festival tonight, are out, and they're up, down and all over the place. Todd McCarthy at Variety thinks the film finds the brothers C retreating "to sophomoric snarky mode," bemoaning the fact that the "seriously talented cast has been asked to act like cartoon characters." The Coens' script, which feels immature but was evidently written around the same time as that for "No Country," is just too fundamentally silly, without the grounding of a serious substructure that would make the sudden turn to violence catch the viewer up short. Nothing about the project's execution inspires the feeling that this was ever intended as anything more than a lark, which would be fine if it were a good one. As it is, audience teeth-grinding sets in early and never lets up. Kirk Honeycutt at the Hollywood Reporter...

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