BURN AFTER READING
The Coen Brothers are back, as is their favourite leading man George Clooney.
They follow No Country For Old Men with an offbeat comedy about a former CIA
agent’s leaked memoirs. Also starring Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John
Malkovich and Tilda Swinton, Clooney is true to his Coen type as goofball Harry
Pfarrer. Harry is an agent for the US Treasury Department who winds up investigating
his alcoholic colleague Ozzie Cox (Malkovich). Fired from the CIA, Cox seeks
revenge by writing his memoirs but his soon-to-be-ex wife nicks them and loses
them and then Idiot Two, gym employee Chad Feldheimer (Pitt), finds them. Burn
After Reading is a convoluted black comedy which sees Harry bungling his job
and getting involved with all of Cox’s women instead.
Verdict: Highly recommended reading
QUANTUM OF SOLACE
Daniel Craig returns as Bond in the sequel
to 2006’s Casino Royale alongside super-hot new Bond girl Olga Kurlyenko.
In Craig’s second outing as the shaken-not-stirred secret agent, we find
Bond hard set on discovering the truth behind Vesper Lynd’s double-crossing
- made all the more painful because he loved the lady; the poor little heartbroken
spy. Craig’s testosterone-fuelled Bond makes his mission personal, as M
picks up on: “I think you are so blinded by inconsolable rage that you
don’t care who you hurt...” A loved-up Bond equals a boring Bond,
luckily we get a vengeful Bond, and while this follows Casino Royale in taking
a new direction for 007 – more like Ludlum’s Bourne Identity than
camp, dull Fleming – it is still a fast-paced action flick where, globe-trotting
to Italy, Austria and South America, Bond discovers that the web of treachery
is more dangerous and deceitful than he’d ever imagined.
Verdict: Bond goes bad, and that's good
Susie Wild likes an ice cream at the interval