Review: The Informant! (2009)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                          THE INFORMANT!
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: This is the mostly true story about the
     rising executive at ADM who turned whistle-blower
     for the FBI and for a few years was the best
     corporate inside informant that the FBI had ever
     had.  But in the shady world of industrial espionage
     the truth becomes highly processed before it reaches
     anyone's ears.  This is a complex tale that had been
     done well on Public Radio, but in Steven Soderbergh's
     hands and with some very strange stylistic choices
     the story becomes muddled and more confusing than
     necessary.  Soderbergh adapts Scott Z. Burns's
     screenplay based on Kurt Eichenwald's book.
     Rating +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

In 2000 the Chicago Public Radio program "This American Life" ran a
story about Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) executive Mark Whitacre
and his experiences having turned informant for the FBI.  That same
month Kurt Eichenwald published a book on the same story.  A
screenwriter, presumably Scott Z. Burns, heard the program and saw
the cinematic possibilities of the story.  The result is THE
INFORMANT!, with Matt Damon in the title role of Mark Whitacre.

ADM is a giant conglomerate that makes additives and raw materials
for grain-based food.  Whitacre was an important executive in the
BioProducts Division who claimed to the FBI that a spy in the
corporation was sabotaging their lysine production.  He said that a
Japanese contact had told him that he could have the name of the
spy for $10 million.  Working with the FBI, Whitacre also offered
them information that his own company was conspiring to price-fix.
This became a long, complex, and frequently humorous, relationship
between Whitmore and FBI Special Agent Brian Shepard (Scott
Bakula).  At first Whitacre is incredibly cooperative and provides
superb evidence of the price fix.  But with time the value of
Whitacre's character and his evidence comes into question.

Having enjoyed the radio broadcast of the story, I expected to
enjoy just as much the film version.  Soderbergh surprisingly
muddles the story, both in the writing and in his choices for the
visual style.  The dialog comes fast and the storyline is
frequently hard to follow with cues from the musical score to
indicate what just happened was really whacky.  This is a current
film and it covers events of the 1990s, but it has cameo roles for
1960s comics Tom and Dick Smothers.  So far that is fine.  But the
font for the frequent labels is of the style that would have been
used on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.  It is sort of a
psychedelic flower-petal font.  And the music frequently is
reminiscent of the Smothers Brothers' style.  All this completely
evokes the wrong era.  The entire film looks dulled-out as if it
had been filmed in 16mm and blown up to a larger format.
Backgrounds frequently have all detail washed out in bright light.
The image quality is substandard.  A message at the beginning of
the film that tells us that some of what is in the film cannot be
taken literally ends with "So there!"  That appears to be a joke
borrowed from AIRPLANE!.  The settings jump from country to
country, not unlike films from Matt Damon's Bourne franchise, but
the scenes have absolutely no feel that they really are from those
countries.

On the other hand Matt Damon looks very believable as an
unglamorous Every-man.  This ability to not look magnetic is not
easy for an actor so familiar.  The ability to look non-descript
served him well in THE GOOD SHEPHERD and serves him well again.
Toward the end he even loses his hair to (a Ron Howard sort of)
male pattern baldness.  I am not always fond of Damon's acting, but
I liked him here.  Additional acting surprises, beyond the presence
of the Smothers Brothers, are a very straight role for Clancy
Brown, best known perhaps as the sadistic guard in THE SHAWSHANK
REDEMPTION.  Here he is in a role that did not require his stature,
but in which he is surprisingly believable.  Whitacre's
philosophical musings in the narration are a definite plus.

The choice of the story is quite good, but the radio version (a
link is provided below) is probably a bit preferable.  I rate this
film a straight +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.  It is a new
group running ADM these days, but I wonder how they are taking this
negative publicity.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1130080/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1200661-informant/>

This American Life version:
<http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=168>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper