Coen Comedy Goes Gently
The crux of my
sentiment is already covered well in Dustin's earlier review, so this
will be short. Here I can just highlight a few interesting points.
There exists a plethora of various characters. It is hard to declaim
one as a central character, but rather they all seem to be playing
various levels of support. Quite what or who they are supporting is
hard to say. Perhaps the main character is stupidity itself. The
logical foil for stupidity is obviously intelligence, but none of
that is on display here. So each scene is just an additional crescendo
of ineptitude. This is intriguing, but cannot carry the film. The
stand-out bastion of stupidity is Pitt's character, who is really
kind of sympathetic for anyone who knows a similar fellow in real
life. He carries his scenes by a wide margin.
The rest of “Burn” may leave you with a drinking problem yourself. Bodies start accumulating. The subtext, as best as I can elucidate, is that everyone dies, and dumber people die faster.
My roommate pointed out that this is an American Irish comedy. It is American because it features lots of people, who sleep with other people, who are not their respective spouses. It is Irish because everyone dies. Those are easy to show. It is harder to show that it is a comedy.