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Burn After Reading starts with Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) who works for the CIA on a non-threatening level. Osbourne Cox quits after they demote his position. When he tells his rigid uptight wife, Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton), she puts together divorce case without his knowledge. During this case she makes a copy of all his financial/personal records onto a disc to give to her attorney. The attorney's secretary loses the disc at a gym.

Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) are best friends who work at this gym. Frances is a dopey lovable, overly hyper questionably gay guy friend. Linda is an insecure plastic surgery obsessed lonely, chronic Internet dater. When they discover the disc, they find out it belongs to Osbourne and attempt to blackmail him. Things really don't turn out quite as planned, and through a series of miscommunication and unfortunate events help to unfold the story.

I honestly didn't know what to make of this story, except I was left just as confused as the writers were. The movie didn't know what it was. The movie thought it was a dark comedy, then a drama, then a romantic comedy, then a suspense thriller. It was bipolar is what it was.

If the Coen brothers had left it as specifically a drama or a specifically a comedy it would've been really great. But because you confuse the viewers by trying to throw everything into one big pot, it's just a big mesh and you can't distinguish one taste from the next, so you sacrifice a great potential.

And the ending. Oy! Do not even get me started. It was a half-ass ending of "We don't really know how to tie this up, so let's just kill everyone."

So it seems I'm the only one on the planet that did not know Fight Club (by Chuck Palahniuk's) was based on a book.

Anyway, so I pick up the book and start reading... then stopped about halfway through. Here are the two main reasons why:

1. I don't know if it's because I saw the movie already, but this is one of those rare ones where the movie follows the book pretty closely, page by page, so it's like reading a book for the 10 billionth time. You already know what's happened so what's the point of continuing when you can see the hotness that is Brad Pitt or Edward Norton on screen portraying these characters?
   
2. Try reading the journal of a person with multiple personality disorder or better yet... someone with ADHD. The writing is all over the place and it gets impossible to stay focused and interested in the character when it's like reading two people talking at the same time.

Skip the book. It's a writing style that I'm not too crazy about. The story just doesn't translate well on paper as it does on screen. If anything reading the book will help you to appreciate the movie even more.. not that it needs it.