Imagine your favorite political thriller, say Three Days of the Condor or The Parallax View . Now, imagine that instead of highly trained intelligence operatives and heroic patriots, the plot is populated with, well, idiots.

Such is the surprisingly successful premise of Burn After Reading .

The latest genre deconstruction by the endlessly imaginative Ethan and Joel Coen, Burn looks and feels very much like a classic Hollywood thriller. Its plot is labyrinthine, each character motivated by his or her own goals, objectives and sense of morality. It's shot in a no-nonsense manner that recalls the documentary feel of films such as All the President's Men . It asks questions about loyalty and security and patriotism.

It's also very funny.

Working off a methodology the Coens have become very comfortable with, Burn mines laughs from the idiosyncrasies and flaws (sometimes fatal) Coen characters inevitably carry. In Burn, these include an out-of-work CIA analyst with a unacknowledged drinking problem (John Malkovich), a Treasury agent with a roving eye (George Clooney) and a pair of gym employees (Brad Pitt and Francis McDormand) intellectually and emotionally unable to deal with the intrigue manufactured by a series of missteps and misunderstandings.

Burn manages to be sad and subtle, particularly in the scenes tracing the courtship of Mr. Clooney and Ms. McDormand's characters, and absurdly funny. Mr. Pitt, in particular, turns in a fine performance as a gym employee who is fit but shockingly dim. It's a tough role, one that needs to generate sympathy despite the clear and present sense of befuddlement that character constantly operates under. In Mr. Pitt's hands, he becomes less an idiot and more an innocent, a character to be pitied and protected because, spies or not, he clearly doesn't have the skills required to live in the contemporary world.

Burn After Reading is not, however, a classic Coens film. Too often, there is a sense of disconnect between the seriousness of the cinema and the silliness of the story. It has neither the gravitas of last year's No Country for Old Men nor the freewheeling comedic courage of O Brother, Where Art Thou? It never quite manages to overcome the vast gap between its dual intentions.

But it sure is fun watching it try.