Intelligence is relative.
Not currently showing on the local cinema circuit.
| Cast |
George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, TIlda Swinton, Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins |
| Director |
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen |
| Screenplay | Ethan Coen, Joel Coen |
| Music | Carter Burwell |
| Cinematography | Emmanuel Lubezki |
| Editing | Ethan Coen, Joel Coen |
| Sound formats | Dolby Digital, Sony Dynamic Digital Sound, DTS |
| Soundtrack | Available |
| Made in | 2008 |
| Produced by | Mike Zoss Productions, Relativity Media, Studio Canal, Working Title Films |
Official Site | IMDB page | ScreenIt Report
Trailer: Small | Medium | Large | Scroll down for embedded trailer
| Genre | Comedy, thriller |
| Language | Strong |
| Nudity | None |
| Sex | Mild |
| Violence | Moderate |
| Prejudice | None |
| Blasphemy | Mild |
| Drug abuse | None |
| Comments | Deadpan satire comedy with moderately adult themes and one or two shocks along the way. |
| These details are supplied by the FPB. If you have a problem with any of the above, please take it up directly with the FPB. Read the Classification Guidelines. | |
Sex / Nudity |
Violence |
Blood / Gore / Gross |
Guns / Weapons |
Profanity |
Alcohol / Drugs |
Smoking |
Disrespectful / Bad Attitude |
Imitative Behaviour |
| Frightening / Tense Scenes |
Jump Scenes |
Tense Family Scenes |
| Music (Scary/Tense) |
Music (Inappropriate) |
Topics to talk about |
| Scale (Max) | 20 |  |
What the Critics say | ||
| Cape Argus / The Star Diane de Beer | 15 |  |
| Die Burger Laetitia Pople | 15 | |
| Cape Times Kenneth Turan | 15 | |
| iAfrica.com Nils van der Linden  Burn after reading? Forget after watching. | 10 |  |
| Sunday Times Barry Ronge | 10 | |
| 24.com Shaheema Barodien The Coens are not known for making missteps, if their enviable filmography is anything to go by, and Burn After Reading makes a very worthy addition. | 15 | |
| Chicago Sunday Times Roger Ebert This is not a great Coen brothers' film. Nor is it one of their bewildering excursions off the deep end. It's funny, sometimes delightful, sometimes a little sad, with dialogue that sounds perfectly logical until you listen a little more carefully and realize all of these people are mad. | 15 | |
| eye Weekly Jason Anderson Relative to Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski and the other movies on which their reputation is staked, Burn After Reading shows a decline in panache and an increase in contempt for their own creations. | 5 |  |
| ReelViews James Berardinelli Burn After Reading likely won't be a major Oscar contender for 2009, but that doesn't mean it won't offer a hell of a good time in theaters toward the end of 2008. | 15 | |
| Rolling Stone Peter Travers The brothers have conjured a crazy-quilt comic thriller that takes on our growing national stupidity in the form of a sex farce. The result is wildly funny, but just as wildly uneven. | 15 | |
| ScreenIt C. Fuchs While this isn't Oscar worthy material (and obviously wasn't intended to be), it easily could have been yet another failed black comedy where the material, no matter the effort, just didn't work in generating laughs from unsavory characters and/or material. Although this offering isn't a laugh-a-minute experience and the satire isn't always as inspired as I might have liked to have seen, I enjoyed the pic while watching it, which is more than I can say for most other releases. | 12 |  |
| Metacritic.com 37 critics | 13 | |
| Rottentomatoes critics 206 critics | 14 | |
| Rottentomatoes tomatometer Tomatometer With Burn After Reading, the Coen Brothers have crafted another clever comedy/thriller with an outlandish plot and memorable characters. | 16 | |
What the People say | ||
| Internet 45876 Netizens A Plot-less Movie Can Only Go So Far | 15 | |
Average .. 67% | 13 | |