"Burn After Reading"

Directed by: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton

Rated: R (adult language, situations, some violence)

Running time: 96 minutes

Best suited for: the avantgarde humorist

Least suited for: the traditional comedy and sit-com seeker

The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, have always been wry storytellers, a little left of center and usually leaving a little more (than most) to the imagination when rendering a tale. They are also something of grand tricksters, pointing the viewer in one direction and suddenly twisting the plot in another.

More often than not it works for them, and over the last 20odd years (beginning with "Blood Simple" in 1984) they've turned out a wide range of goodto-superb, slightly off-kilter films.

In my opinion, their "Barton Fink" with John Turturro (1991) remains the best inside-Hollywood flick ever made, and this from a guy who loves "Sunset Boulevard," "The Muse," "Adaptation," "The Player," "Bowfinger" and a dozen other HollywooddissesHollywood gems.

When the Coens go for blood, they usually hit the jugular.

I will acknowledge that their films aren't hewn to everybody's tastes—they have a fondness for higher than average body counts (even in their comedies), and sometimes important things happen to important characters off camera, requiring those in the audience to blink twice before putting all the pieces together.

I suppose one might consider this creative filmmaking. It certainly makes us pay rapt attention. Keeping your audience alert isn't a bad thing; in a sense, it's really interactive filmmaking. But once in awhile, even the best cowboy can't catch up with every stray calf.

I acknowledge a few too many strays in the Coen's "No Country for Old Men"—an Oscar-winning film whose final chapter didn't work as well for me as for most critics. I still like my films with a semblance of finality: When the theater lights go up, I like to know that the movie's actually over, not that perhaps the projector has thrown a rod and I must wait through an unintended and excruciating intermission. (I had the same issue with "There Will Be Blood.") I sat for 10 minutes after "No Country" ended—but nothing else ever did happen.

In "Burn After Reading" the Coens once again stampede the herd, but unlike their previous effort, these little dogies don't wander too far or too fast and, truth be told, are actually kinda fun to round up. (My apologies to anyone expecting a Western at this point.)

The Coens are still wry, tongue-in-cheek, cynical and, at times, back-stabbing. (When folks begin to drop in "Burn After Reading," I mean, really—tell me you saw it coming.)

Not a Western, and not really a comedy either. Not in a traditional Billy Wilder or Mel Brooks sense.

But it is a deft, dry, funny movie and especially so if you smiled through films like "Dr. Strangelove" or the Coens' "Fargo" or even (although this might be a stretch) "Shaun of the Dead."

I wouldn't call "Burn After Reading" a black comedy, although it is a very dark gray. Yes, it's sarcastic, even sardonic, and yet it's also witty and intelligent and why I'm still on a preamble—not telling you much about George Clooney or Brad Pitt or Frances McDormand or John Malkovich is intentional.

Odd things happen to strange people, but that's all you'll get out of me. The less you know, the better your experience. I will say that the film rags on the CIA and, I suppose, marriage, two subjects where dark humor often pays dividends in movie theaters.

Add those few missing puzzle pieces that the Coens have intentionally omitted from the film—well, even those small gaps seem perfectly logical here. Nicely balanced in a Cubist-style Picasso sort of way. I mean it's good to think for ourselves once in awhile. Especially when we can laugh at the results.