Burn After Reading is the Coen brothers' latest comedic re-imagining of genre conventions, sliding in next to The Hudsucker Proxy (Horatio Alger Stories), and The Big Lebowski (film noir). But despite Reading's frequent attempts to channel Lebowski's spirit, the movie is largely devoid of the madcap energy that makes Lebowski so irresistible, and often devoid of any energy whatsoever. For all its humor (and there will be humor), the movie is a mostly glum affair with serious actors doing serious things quite seriously.

Reading's slightly discomfiting tone is largely the result of the changed nature of the espionage movie. Though his weapon was often wit rather than a gun, the film spy was in many ways a modern version of the western hero. It was a solitary affair, just the spy against the forces around him, and the lines were always clearly drawn (except when it came to double agents and females). But modern spy movies subvert this narrative, turning instead to massive networks incomprehensible to the individual, and new technologies that give governments unlimited surveillance abilities, but somehow take the fun out of everything. "Burn after reading" may have once connoted the spy's individuality and irreplaceability, promising a mission impossible, but now it simply means "save to disk," pass the information along to the next person down the line.

Burn After Reading is a spy story in the vein of The Good Shepherd: the individual spy is nothing but a cog in the larger industrial process, the villain is more likely the man in the next room than some Soviet agent, and there's a general joylessness to the whole affair. None of this is necessarily to say that Burn After Reading is a bad movie, just that it isn't the broad comedy sold in the trailers.

With the exception of Brad Pitt's brilliantly over-the-top fitness associate, and John Malkovitch's equally impressive turn as the movie's central spook, the movie's stellar cast sleepwalks through their performances, channeling comfortable, familiar characters rather than trying anything new. The usually impressive Tilda Swinton is especially disappointing; her character is, for all intents and purposes, the same character she played in Michael Clayton, except slightly more evil.

At the same time, the movie continues to attest to the Coens' development as filmmakers. No Country for Old Men was rightly acclaimed as a spectacular work of filmmaking, and there are similar scenes of overwhelming artistry in Burn After Reading. These scenes show the Coens' unparalleled ability to build tension, and to draw dramatic performances. George Clooney's performance in particular takes on a new vitality the moment he's asked to leave the comedic realm and to begin to act dramatically. Suddenly he's engaged in a very different movie, one better suiting his and the Coens' evolving skill set.

Woody Allen's justly maligned Melinda & Melinda posited that the same story could easily be a tragedy or a comedy; it's all just a matter of perspective. This is certainly true for Burn After Reading: the movie is enjoyable, if a bit slow, when fully invested in its web of espionage and surveillance, but hilarious when it steps back to a comic vantage point. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't quite strike the right balance between the two and the whole thing feels uneven. A fully worthy mess, but nowhere near a masterpiece or even very good.