Palmer’s been tipped off to Linda and Chad’s attempt to commit treason, but when he conveys this information to his boss, he’s met with incredulity. Simmons occasionally confers with a trusted senior agent named Palmer (David Rasche). The film begins, ends, and occasionally returns to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where an unnamed high-ranking CIA official played by J.K. What’s more, they can’t even manage to keep this misguided bit of intrigue a secret. Going to the Russians rather than some other antagonistic entity was just another sign that Linda and Chad had no idea what they were doing, that their notion of international espionage had advanced no further than Roger Moore–era James Bond movies. The United States wasn’t on great terms with Russia, but it wasn’t on the top of any 2008 list of threats to American democracy. In 2008, this was a joke, and a good joke. But negotiations break down, leaving Chad with a bloody nose and prompting Linda and her partner to resort to plan B: selling the secrets to the Russians. Seeking to profit from their discovery, Linda and Chad try to extort money from Osborne. In truth, they have only the memoir - or, if you prefer, “mem-wah” - of Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a mid-ranking CIA analyst recently dismissed from the service because his alcoholism had begun to interfere with his work. In Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2008 film Burn After Reading, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), a pair of employees at Washington D.C.’s Hardbodies gym, stumble upon a CD filled with what they believe to be government secrets.
#Frances mcdormand burn after reading tv#
(Do the 20-somethings of today even get the idea of Saturday morning cartoons?) Does anyone who didn’t spent way too many hours watching late-night TV in the late ’80s understand why Lloyd Dobler asks his nephew, “Can I borrow a copy of your Hey Soul classics?” in Say Anything…? References get dated without killing comedy, but what happens when one of the cornerstones of a film involves a joke that history, moving at lightning speed, has made look less absurd? Do the 20-somethings of today, for instance, understand why the 20-somethings of Reality Bites keep singing “ Conjunction Junction,” the Schoolhouse Rock song that used to be an inescapable fixture of Saturday morning cartoons. It usually takes a generation for a joke to stop making sense.
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