The Informant!

The Informant! Review

This is a very funny film and Matt Damon is perfect as a goofy-yet-conniving corporate schlub. What "The Informat!" is not, is slapstick. It didn't need to be . . playing the material straight was the right choice. The combo of Mark Whitacre's sincere cluelessness ("I'll bring down the company and then get to run it!"), hubris, and a stunning ability to believe his own whoppers was absurd . . and fascinating because it's all (or mostly) true.

The alternately stunned and incredulous looks on various FBI officials' faces as each new, game-changing "minor" detail surfaced was priceless, and was probably not far from the real agents' responses. I looked up the real Mark Whitacre and my first impression is that he really is that bass-ackwards. And now he's the COO of a different company. You can't make that stuff up.

This film was generally appreciated by professional critics and tends to polarize viewers. To me this is akin to a stamp of approval . . Soderbergh committed to specific storytelling and visual styles that won't appeal to everyone. Going for mass appeal when shooting quirky material like this (high-concept it ain't) typically results in a generic, forgettable experience that earns a lot of "It was OK" verdicts. "The Informant!" is deservedly getting "loved it" and "blows big time" votes in equal measure.

If you tend to enjoy understated, unique critical hits that confused and frustrated your average audience member, this is worth two hours. If you tend to dismiss the snooty critics' pronouncements and only enjoy pratfalls, one-liners, or underlined, rim-shot comedy, then please move along. No need to torment yourself.

The Informant! Overview

A rising star at agri-industry giant archer daniels midland whitacre suddenly turns whistleblower. Even as he exposes his companys multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the fbi whitacre envisions himself being hailed as a hero of the common man and handed a promotion. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 02/23/2010 Starring: Matt Damon Frank Welker Run time: 108 minutes Rating: R

The Informant! Specifications

Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!--like the director's one-two Oscar® punch, Erin Brockovich and Traffic--is an energetic exposé of corporate/criminal chicanery with wide-ranging implications for life in these United States. Not so much like those movies, it plays as hyper-caffeinated comedy. At its center is Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a biochemist and junior executive at agri-giant Archer Daniels Midland who, in 1992, began feeding the FBI evidence of ADM's involvement in price fixing. Mark's motive for doing so is elusive, sometimes self-contradictory, and subject to mutation at any moment. To describe him as bipolar would be akin to finding the Marx Brothers somewhat zany. His Fed handlers, along with the audience, start thinking of him as a hapless goofball. Then they and we get blind-sided with the revelation of further dimensions of Mark's life at ADM, and the nature of the investigation--and the movie--changes. That will happen again. And again. It's Soderbergh's ingenious strategy to make us fellow travelers on Mark's crazy ride, virtually infecting us with a short-term version of his dysfunctionality.

Props to screenwriter Scott Z. Burns for boiling down Kurt Eichenwald's 600-page book The Informant: A True Story without sacrificing coherence. And Matt Damon, bulked up by 30 pounds and spluttering his manic lines from under a caterpillar mustache, reconfirms his virtuosity and his willingness to dive deep into such a dodgy personality. On the downside, despite a small army of comedians in cameo roles, The Informant! has nothing like the rich field of subsidiary characters encountered in Erin Brockovich and Traffic. That lack of vibrancy is aggravated by the dominance of prairie-flat Midwest speech patterns and cadences (most of the film unreels in Illinois), and the razzmatazz score by veteran tunesmith Marvin Hamlisch sounds like pep-rally music on an industrial film. Soderbergh also photographed the movie (under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), and his decision to show everything through a corn-mush filter turns it into a big-screen YouTube experience. --Richard T. Jameson

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Oct 02, 2010 23:12:06