The Informant!

Layers, more layers, it goes on and on when corporate informer Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) starts blabbing to the FBI about dodgy shenanigans at his mid-west corn-producing employers. Who do we believe? Where are the truths? Things are not a simple as they may initially seem. This is a quirky production, y'know the type, kinda colourful in a cartoon postcard kind of way with an optimistic voiceover from our main character. It is not one of those heavy, heavy expose's investigating the workings of huge corporations with tense court scenes and the like. No, the touch is certainly kept light and the subject-matter all the more interesting because it focuses in on the individual rather than the faceless corporate edifice. Not laugh-out-loud despite being described as a comedy, but reasonably entertaining and worth checking out.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

The true story of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) who worked for a giant firm that produced lysine chemicals in products to be consumed by humans. Whitacre maintained a degree of honesty and integrity to his work, but when he uncovered evidence of price fixing with rival foreign companies, he turned undercover informant for the FBI...but, as events rolled on, it would appear he may have known a bit more about what was going on himself than he was letting on.

Playing like a lighter version of 1999's The Insider, Steven Soderbergh's dramatization of corporate corruption in the early 90s is amusingly on edge through-out, with Damon's constant muted voice-overs gently guiding us along this tale of principles and ethics clashing with corporate greed and deception. Damon is affable enough in the lead role (certainly hard to think of any actor who could have done it better) and the story is pretty relevant and dynamic. There's nothing about it that really makes it unforgettable or brilliant, but it's certainly worth a bit of your time. ***

I think this might be Damons best performance since the Good Will Hunting movie. At least it felt to me like that. And I'm not saying that to put movies like Bourne or Oceans down, they are a lot of fun (on different levels), but performance wise he didn't have to stretch that many "muscles" (action wise on the other hand, he obviously had to, at least with the Bourne Trilogy).

The story is pretty simple and the anti "Hero" is quite ordinary. Which might make it less appealing to a large audience, but it wasn't aimed to crack the box office. Soderbergh captures a weird feeling in this movie, that leaves you with a weird taste at the end. Of course, you could argue, that the movie shows too little of Damons wife, maybe even too little of his employer. But as it is, it's a pretty solid and greatly edited work.

Even the voice over, which seems and is completely out of place, works really good in this movie. I guess even the Team America members would change their opinion of "Matt Damon" after watching this one. Give it a try, but don't expect laugh out loud comedy (not the ordinary kind that is).

This will be short. I read the book when it first came out in 2000, and recently watched the film, and now am rereading the book. The book is dry and difficult, with three and half pages of involved people listed at the very beginning. Who can keep track of all this? It is replete with the taped conversations of the involved, all of the everything that went on. And, it is tedious, if correct, in the extreme. Well, what the film did, and bless it, was to simplify all of this stuff and make it intelligible to us ordinary folks. And, it made a really nasty story somewhat funny, because we know within the first half hour or so that there is something hinky about this Whitacre character. Oh boy, is there, but I won't write a spoiler here. There's no reason to. Even in the book, the FBI guys were wondering about Whitacre. Why did he turn traitor to his own company? What did he have to gain? The film is extremely well done, an amazingly good adaptation of a book which would probably have you snoozing after fifteen minutes. Matt Damon really shows his stuff in this one, even developing a modest middle age belly to complete the image of the nerdy scientist.

Watch it, laugh at it, and remember: this is a true story about why most of the people in America are poor and how their losses are paying for the riches of companies which have decided that "the customer is the enemy".

At its core, The Informant! is, by no means, an inherently funny story. It involves international corporate conspiracies, corruption, deception and betrayal. Yet somehow, Steven Soderbergh manages to turn Kurt Eichenwald's book, which depicts the true story of former ADM employee Mark Whitacre in the manner of John Grisham's best legal thrillers, into a thoroughly entertaining, often very funny movie. This, of course, is aided by Matt Damon's brilliant, spot-on portrayal of the corporate executive-turned-FBI informant, as well as solid work by the supporting cast.

When I first read Eichenwald's book after learning about this movie, I was slightly skeptical. Economics and law are far from my forte. However, what I found was a story so ridiculous and told in such a compelling way that it was difficult to put the book down. Especially for a nonfiction story, the characters felt so well-developed and so three-dimensional that you cannot help but care immensely about them, despite their flaws. And then, I heard that Soderbergh planned to make the movie version into a dark comedy. Given some of the subject matter and material involved, I was worried that the film would turn into too much of a farce and would not give the real-life story and people the proper respect.

To my utter relief, I was wrong. While some of the darker elements have been left out and the film is undoubtedly lighter than its source material, Soderbergh stayed true to reality, keeping the events mostly accurate to what Eichenwald described in his book, and hence, to what really happened; in fact, on a side note, after seeing the movie, the real-life Mark Whitacre commented that the film was "very accurate", which is a bit of a surprise considering Soderbergh made the decision to not consult any of the people involved in the actual 1990s investigation.

Oddly enough, while this probably sounds contradictory to the opening statement of my review, much of the humor actually springs out of the events and dialogue depicted in the book, almost all of which took place in reality, rather than jokes or quips written by the screenwriter or improvised by the director or actors. There are so many hidden layers to the tale that, in retrospect, it is hard to not laugh or at least gap in wonder at how it all unfolded. Of course, that is not to say that Scott Z. Burns, who adapted Einchenwald's book for the screen, did not do any work. The screenplay does an admirable job of adhering to the true events with enough creativity, wit and originality to prevent the film from seeming like just a retread of everything Einchenwald accomplished in his narrative.

Also impressive is the cast. Naturally, as Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon stands out. Even though he had not met the person he was portraying before filming, he perfectly captures Whitacre's personality, mannerisms and attitude, making him seem larger-than-life but at the same time, completely and utterly human, while many other actors might have made him too much of a caricature. The supporting cast does a fine job as well and perhaps the most noteworthy of these actors are Scott Bakula as the benignly professional FBI agent Brian Shepard and Melanie Lynskey, who portrays Whitacre's devoted wife, Ginger, with a sort of Mid-western bubbliness.

In typical Steven Soderbergh mode, the director adds a quirky, unique tone to the movie. Although the whimsical, almost cartoonish score is sometimes a bit intrusive, this quaint style effectively mirrors the film's subtle and often ironic humor, and instead of being distracting, the cinematography, complete with the intense lighting and vibrant colors that make Soderbergh's films so distinctly his, helps emphasize the movie's off-beat wackiness. From the opening credits, viewers are immersed in the simple, charming vibe of small-town Illinois; this ambiance is benefited by the fact that Soderbergh chose to film in Decatur, the very town in which the real-life events occurred. Everything feels authentic, from the hairstyles to the ADM office and even the colorful array of ties sported by various cast members throughout the movie.

Furthermore, by using voice-over narration, Soderbergh effectively manages to enter the mind of Mark Whitacre, who is, to say the least, an extremely fascinating personality. Partly thanks to Matt Damon's nuanced performance, the audience learns to sympathize with - if not root for - Mark, regardless of his moral ambiguity and questionable decisions. Perhaps, more than anything else, this is because the movie never makes fun of him, only at his nearly unbelievable situation. Not once is he made out to be a completely villainous guy or a complete hero; he is merely human.