Though I've never actually received one, I know enough about gift horses to avoid looking such generosity directly in the oathole. But why? What is it afraid I might see? Is it plotting to bite my face? Working from a tip that the advice has little to do nowadays with equine-related presents, I decided to challenge the familiar maxim with a look at the filmography of Joel and Ethan Coen, a stellar collection that gives and gives yet asks for nothing in return (except for maybe nine bucks). But their latest offering, screwball violence entitled "Burn After Reading," finally yielded a surprising discovery.

Opening with a Google Earth-like plummet through the troposphere, "Burn After Reading" drops us at Langley, where a disbelieving, bowtied spook is getting his walking papers. "What the fuck?" turns out to be the favorite query of Osborne Cox (John Malkovich, always a hoot in his bluster), now-former CIA who announces to his chilly wife Katie (the increasingly invaluable Tilda Swinton) an intention to write his memoirs. Through a series of events involving Katie, her married lover Harry (an unappealing George Clooney), and advice of divorce counsel, a disk containing these "memwah," as Cox pompously insists on repeating, winds up in enterprising albeit inept hands.

Stealing the film from a cast literally silly with Oscar winners is Brad Pitt, sporting a modified Johnny Suede pompadour to play Chad, a charmingly vapid personal trainer now in possession of the disk. Chad's lonely co-worker Linda (Frances McDormand) wants to parlay the possibly classified material into cash that will fund lipo-, rhino-, and all the other -plasties that she is certain will land her a man. So after a screamingly funny phone call during which Chad threatens Cox with the security of his "sensitive shit," the frantic "Burn After Reading" takes wing, as this greedy, shortsighted "league of morons" gets in way over their heads, resorting to desperate actions and out-of-the-blue brutality to achieve their selfish ends.

Sounds familiar, right? Here's why: in "Raising Arizona," H.I. and Edwina were hoping to purloin a spare baby. In "Fargo," Jerry Lundegaard thought he could replace embezzled funds by ransoming the missus. In "No Country For Old Men," Llewelyn Moss wanted to hide drug money from a psychopath with a Prince Valiant bob. And in "The Big Lebowski," the Dude was merely looking to replace a rug that really tied the room together. While it's technically not a crime to recycle a device in perpetuity (hi, John Waters!), doing so without one redeemable character for whom the audience can root is a dicey move. That's the reason "The Ladykillers" remake didn't work, and that's the reason "Burn After Reading" ultimately grows tedious.

It's a shame about the sum, too, because the enjoyable parts are all there, from composer Carter Burwell's instantly recognizable thunder of timpani to game A-listers having amoral fun to the Coens' borderline-smug skewering of those who have power as well as those who think they want it. Clooney's macho tailhound - though deft with tools, let's say - seems distractingly unnecessary, especially when compared with the hilariously dimwitted Cox-Chad negotiations, Pitt narrowing his eyes whenever the cheery Chad remembers he's supposed to be intimidating. "What did we learn?" J.K. Simmons' agent asks during the too-tidy wrap-up. To paraphrase Chad, gift horses can be... deceptive.

Tiny Bishopville, South Carolina boasts a yard teeming with topiaries that would make Versailles turn even greener with envy. These emerald jewels are the work of 66-year-old Pearl Fryar, the very definition of the term "outsider artist" and the subject of "A Man Named Pearl," an uplifting documentary that explores the positive ripple effect of one man's obsession. Working from plants discarded by the local nursery, the untrained Fryar initially set out to be the first African-American to win his local "Garden of the Month" contest, but eventually fashioned his three acres into a destination for lovers of both horticulture and sculpture. Doing my job might mean lamenting the film's workmanlike basics or taking it to task for not digging deeper into Bishopville's racial divide, but it's impossible to knock such a big-hearted story about an ordinary man who balances on the ladder's forbidden rungs, causes the ladies to swoon over his own boyish sculpting, and infuses young and old, black and white, with his remarkably contagious passion. 

Burn After Reading

(R), directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

Now playing

A Man Named Pearl

(NR), directed by Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson

Screens Saturday and Sunday at the Dryden