Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading is a 2008 black comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows a recently jobless CIA analyst, Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), whose misplaced memoirs are found by a pair of dimwitted gym employees (Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt). When they mistake the memoirs for classified government documents, they undergo a series of misadventures in an attempt to profit from their find. The film also stars George Clooney as a womanizing U.S. Marshal; Tilda Swinton as Katie Cox, the wife of Osbourne Cox; Richard Jenkins as the gym manager; and J. K. Simmons as a CIA supervisor. The film premiered on August 27, 2008, at the Venice Film Festival. It was released in the United States on September 12, 2008, and in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2008. It performed well at the box office, grossing over $163 million from its $37 million budget. Critical response was mostly positive, and the film received nominations at both the Golden Globes and British Academy Film Awards. Plot Faced with a demotion due to a drinking problem, Osbourne Cox angrily quits his job as a CIA analyst and decides to write a memoir. Upon telling his wife Katie, she surreptitiously files for divorce and continues an existing affair with Harry Pfarrer, a married U.S. Marshal with paranoid tendencies. At the instruction of her lawyer, Katie delivers a copy of her husband's digital financial records and other personal files, unknowingly including a rough draft of Osbourne's memoir. The lawyer's assistant copies the files onto a CD-R, which she accidentally leaves on the locker room floor of Hardbodies, a local gym. The disc falls into the hands of personal trainer Chad Feldheimer and his coworker Linda Litzke, who mistakenly believe it contains sensitive government information. Chad and Linda devise a plan to return the disc to Osbourne for a reward as Linda is eager to raise money for cosmetic surgery. However, their inept efforts to blackmail Osbourne only enrage him. Upon their failure to secure money from Osbourne, Chad and Linda try to sell the disc to the Russian embassy, meeting with an official who is later revealed to be a spy for the CIA. Osbourne's erratic behavior prompts Katie to change the locks on their house and to invite Harry to move in. Harry is a serial philanderer who incidentally becomes romantically involved with Linda after meeting her on a dating site.