9. Burn After Reading And No Country For Old Men Are Pretty Similar
After the intense, straight-faced return to form that was No Country For Old Men, audiences needed something of a breather for the next Coen Brothers film. Thankfully the genius filmmaking duo duly obliged, putting out the wacky dark ensemble comedy Burn After Reading, which had the plot of a conspiracy thriller but presented it as a mad-cap movie full of jokes and broad characters. That surface reading has the film as being a lot lighter than No Country For Old Men was, even with Brad Pitt getting shot in the head and George Clooney's special chair. The tone is intentionally lighter, the increasingly violent actions in the film being equated with a bunch of headless chickens running around, making a nuisance of themselves. In fact, No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading are a lot closer related than you think. The second film is essentially a retelling of the first, except a comedy instead of a tragedy: it's still about the essentially chaotic nature of the universe and the inevitability of death. Just with slightly more laughs.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
