*** Rating

What happens if blackmailing the CIA goes wrong?





When blackmailing someone, it helps to have something powerful to blackmail them with. So when not-so-clever gym employee Chad (Brad Pitt) finds a CD that seems to contain information about the Central Intelligence Agency, he hopes to cash in big.

Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), an analyst for the CIA, has quit his job and decides to write his memoirs about his time at the Agency. His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is divorcing him to be with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), who himself is cheating on his wife. After being advised to do so from her attorney, Katie copies all of her husband’s personal and financial documents onto a disc. However, the attorney’s secretary leaves the disc behind at the gym, where it falls in the hands of Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer. Linda especially is desperate for money, as she wants to have cosmetic surgery done in order to find love.

Chad and Linda come up with a plan to play good Samaritans and hope for a reward from Osborne – after all they cannot make sense of the CD and figure that he most be a highly important agent. In fact, all they have is a copy of his memoir draft – and he knows exactly what it is they’ve got. So when Chad screws up a meeting with Osborne, Linda decides to get outside aid – and takes the information she’s got to the Russian Embassy.





Meanwhile, Katie and Harry’s affair is running cold, and he meets Linda in an online dating forum. Katie kicked Osborne out of the house and changed the keys, so when Chad tries to observe the house, he sees Harry and Katie instead. Because Linda promised the Russians to get more information, Chad breaks into Osborne’s house, just to be surprised – and shot – by Harry. When Linda mentions her worry that Chad might have been kidnapped by the Russians to Harry, he thinks she’s a spy.

Nobody trusts anyone, and a mess of gigantic proportions is the result – all because of a half-finished book.

The two outstanding performances in this movie are those of John Malkovich and Brad Pitt. Malkovich plays the agent with a drinking problem and foul mouth and you believe every word. Brad Pitt’s character on the other hand, is a rather dumb gym employee, who probably couldn’t even spell the word “blackmail”.

Throughout the entire movie, the focus changes from one character to the next and back again, but the relationships between them are easy to follow. All these lives and more are affected because of one CD – and one person who has no clue how to handle the situation.