Burn After Reading is about a disgraced alcoholic ex-CIA vet Ozzie Cox (Malkovich) who puts all sorts of sensational information and government secrets in his memoirs. These are stolen by his ex-wife Katie (Swinton) who accidentally drops the CD at a gym. Enter the goofy gym trainer Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and gym owner, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), who jump at the opportunity of blackmailing Cox.

Meanwhile, the CIA sends the idiotic federal marshal Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who is sleeping with Katie, to retrieve the CD.

What follows is a comic battle to get the CD. “I think that’s pretty safe to say, yeah, it’s a dueling idiots movie,” Joel Coen has been quoted as saying. This is not the first time George Clooney is playing a buffoon in a Coen brothers movie. This time he has good friend, Brad Pitt, for company. Clooney has jokingly said that Burn After Reading will shoot down two careers at the same time.

Pitt has said in an interview that when he told Joel Cohen ”I don’t know how to play this, I mean, he’s such an idiot,” Joel replied, tongue in cheek, “You’ll be fine!”

John Malkovich has said that all the characters of Burn after Reading are emotionally or mentally defective. Like the Burn After Reading poster says “Intelligence is Relative.”