Brad Pitt’s going to star in two movies this year, “Burn after Reading” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. The former, an accidental-espionage comedy with a highly bankable ensemble cast from the reassuring oeuvre of the Coen Brothers is slated to release on September 12 while the latter, a bizarre romantic fantasy from cult-genius David Fincher, whose resume includes Fight Club, Seven and The Game is expected to hit the marquee come Christmas. Loyalists of the real Brad Pitt (as opposed to the Brad Pitt of the Brangelina marketing franchise) are feverishly hoping that their guy nails the critics with this one.

Hope that is not unfounded, considering the fact that Pitt’s yet to deliver any major blip on the Box Office / Critical radar since looking like a clothed Greek sculpture in Troy. Religious Brad Pitt backers fear that the actor has made way to the star, and the reservoir of talent that shone through his earlier works like Twelve Monkeys, Meet Joe Black and Snatch has been replaced by the troubled waters of arrogance and vanity. Nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1995 for his astounding portrayal of a demented asylum resident in Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, Pitt’s recent films have belied a tiny decline both in the quality of his selection and his undeniable creative genius. Last Year, he starred in long time creative associate Steve Soderbergh’s delightfully unapologetic Ocean’s Thirteen that was so bent on style and visual splendor that all Pitt needed to do was just stand there like he was modeling a shaving cream or a suiting line. He followed it up with Jesse James in the so-could-have-been-a-classic, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. and mysteriously agreed to be upstaged by the gifted Casey Affleck. The year before that, Pitt was one of the producers of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Oscar-nominated Babel. Pitt, who turned in a gloriously restrained performance in the film as Gwyneth Palthrow’s husband caught in both a midlife crisis and bureaucratic crossfire also stars in the miserably under-written Mr. and Mrs. Smith that scorched critics’ hearts with its dumb sexiness and an even dumber Angelina Jolie.

Coming as they are at a time when its really necessary for Pitt to reassign himself the tag of an actor who looked and acted like a mini-god, Burn after reading and Benjamin Button would surely be signs of either one of these: that Pitt is an under performing but certain genius who slid off the roof of the world under his own weight or he is wide awake now after half a decade of under-achievement and is eying the critics for brunch.