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It’s a dog screw dog world in the Coen Brothers’ latest beast, “Burn After Reading.” The screwing is limitless and sloppy, whether in the form of sex or violence. The film’s style takes a cue from the Bros’ 1996 Midwestern winter murderland antics of “Fargo,” merging comedy and thriller — because after all, there’s a fine line between hilarity and disaster, and the lead dunces stomp that line into the ground.

John Malkovich who plays Osbourne Cox, a C.I.A. analyst who at the beginning is assumed to have a fairly high clearance level, is the first unfortunate character we see of this eclectic cast. The cast, admittedly, is a huge draw for this film. Who could resist the two aging heartthrobs, but more importantly consistently impressive George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and the commanding Francis McDormand and Tilda Swinton?

But oh, John Malkovich, how I love thee. A Princeton alumnus, dressed quite sharply in an “I make way more money than you” suit, finished with a bowtie which just fucking makes the whole thing, he is self-righteous, entitled, and is generally a smug asshole. For Christsakes, he over-exaggerates the French pronunciation of American-adopted words like “memoir” and points out the necessity for their usage in the first place. For example, during his first encounter with Harry Pfarrer (Clooney), he corrects him — eyes rolling — that yes, that deplorably referred “goat cheese” is in fact chevre. He pays no attention to his own rude attitude because he really just doesn’t give a fuck and detests most people in general. This trait is especially unfortunate for the C.I.A. officials who fire him in the first scene of the movie.

It should be noted that each character - Cox included - is a complete clueless idiot. Everyone, whether they realize it or not, gets way up in each other’s business by way of poorly plotted affairs and blackmail that inevitably straddles the verge of utter demise.

In contrast to the high profile elitist lives of Osbourne and his hardass, disapproving wife, Katie (Swinton), and Harry Pfarrer who she’s sleeping with on the side, Linda Litzke (McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Pitt) are Hardbodies Fitness Center employees who instigate the deadly clusterfuck. They get a hold of a copy of Osbourne’s memoirs that were found on the gym's locker room floor that he began writing in lieu of a job, and mistake it for top-secret government documents. Linda is in search of money for multiple cosmetic surgery procedures and will go to any and all lengths to obtain it, considering these “documents” her golden ticket. Chad is the overzealous, dim-witted, spandex-wearing workout enthusiast (and executes it beautifully) that is hopelessly loyal to his good friend and colleague, Linda. He is the willing and quite unfortunate pawn of their blackmail scheme. This sets off a series of threats, misguided spying and bloodshed when Osbourne tries to reclaim the supposed confidential information and the Russian Embassy, of all places, gets involved.

The culmination of this film is hysterically absurd and funny. Clooney mutilates a sex chair he built, complete with a mechanized thrusting dildo, most everyone has slept with and/or killed each other, and the final conversation between the head of the C.I.A. played by JK Simmons and the C.I.A. man who is handling the ordeal sums up the whole movie. The C.I.A. has kept a covert eye on the attention-begging actions of all the lead characters and when reflecting on the puzzling case, the superior asks the officer,

“Now what have we learned from all this?”

“Not to do it again, sir?”

“That’s right. I’ll be damned if I know what we did.”