After creating an Oscar-winning classic in No Country For Old Men, the Coens haven’t so much changed gear as swapped vehicles. Burn After Reading is a clown-mobile; a comical death-trap constructed from lots of disposable parts.

The elaborate doodle of a plot hinges around gym workers Chad (Pitt, acting the prat in amusing fashion) and Linda (McDormand) and their misguided attempts to blackmail a supercilious CIA analyst, name of Osborne Cox (Malkovich).

Make that ‘ex-CIA’, since Osborne has just quit in acrimonious circumstances (“I drink too much? You’re a Mormon – compared to you, everyone drinks too much!”).

Having nothing better to do, Osborne puts his agency reminiscences on a disc – which somehow finds its way into the hands of Linda, a serial internet dater with a plastic surgery obsession, and Chad, a blithering idiot.

Meanwhile, Osborne’s Brit-bitch wife Katie (Swinton) is having an affair with their old friend Harry (Clooney), another Washington suit who is married and neurotic, going on paranoid.

Both are talking divorce, though Harry also likes to dip his philandering toe into the online dating pool. Which is where he meets Linda…

Throw in divorce lawyers, a lovelorn gym manager (Richard Jenkins) and some intolerable cruelty to Dermot Mulroney, and things start to get incredibly messy.

“Report back to me… I dunno… when it makes sense”, barks CIA boss J.K. Simmons (surely the greatest gift to comedy since the whoopee cushion?) in one of two examples of scene-stealing brilliance.

Visit Planet Coen and that’s what you get: deliciously deadpan dialogue spouted by universally quirky caricatures whose relationships are as unlikely as they are unhealthy. Oh, and the sort of thrombotic violence that could jar an elephant out of a coma.

For once, however, the brothers’ pseudonymous editor ‘Roderick Jaynes’ is slightly off his game. Some scenes feel overstretched while others slot in and fade out far too abruptly. And bringing in the Russians is a subplot too far.

But you can always rely on the Coens to produce something wonderful from leftfield. Golden moments here include the surprising fate of Chad, Seattle’s supremely awful answer to TV-am, and the very last word in marital aids. Chair, madam?

With folk appearing and disappearing willy-nilly, the nonsense unfolds like a funnier, albeit less satisfying, version of The Usual Suspects.

So enjoy it while it lasts. Because suddenly… like that… it’s gone.

Elliott Noble