The Informant!

Much has been made of Steven Soderbergh's career. He is almost a chameleon with the movies he makes. he makes big budget crime capers(The Ocean's movies), then makes Epic 4 hour long marathons (Che) and then follows that up with a fly on the wall look at a high class hooker who is played by a real porn star. Soderbergh turns a lot of people off because his films have a tendency to be pretentious and Soderbergh doe snot apologize for it. His movies, no matter how grand scale they are, are personal. He always serves as his own cinematographer, as if he cannot imagine having his vision seen from anyone else's perspective. The guy makes the kinds of movies he wants to make without letting box office or critical acclaim or panning dictate his films. He is a very admirable director. I do not always enjoy his movies, but I always respect the experience and I always do my best to catch all of his movies.

In 1995 Mark Whitacre(Matt Damon) went to jail for 9 years and the rest of the bosses in his company went to jail for 3 years. This might not seem like a big deal, but Whitacre was a whistleblower on the company and worked with the F.B.I for 3 years to bring down the company, ADM for price fixing. So how does the informant end up going to jail for longer than the people on whom he dropped the dime? Well, that is presumably made this a movie worth making. Whitacre works for a corn manufacturer and in 1992 his company is trying out some new things, but nothing is working and it turns out that someone within the plant is poisoning the tests. A man in Japan will tell Whitacre who it is for a fee. This gets the F.B.I involved (the agents are played by Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) and soon Whitacre is confessing to The F.B.I that ADM has been conspiring with rival companies to fix prices of all of their products. Whitacre turns informant and starts wearing a wire to all meetings and in a few years The F.B.I has a strong enough case to start arresting the corporate guys. However, this is really only the beginning of the story.

Matt Damon put on some serious weight, and grew an obnoxious moustache for the role of Mark Whitacre and it pays off big time. Damon's whiteacre is perfectly unassuming, which is what makes the reveal that Whitacre had been embezzling millions of dollars, such a great one. Whitacre went away for more time because he lied to The F.B.I, the Government, hell he lied to everyone. No one would have expected it because he looks nothing like a mastermind. In fact, the movie is full of stream of consciousness inner monologues (voiceovers) that really make Whitacre come off as kind of a simple idiot. He is obviously not an idiot, but the inner monologue actually reveals something much deeper, and Soderbergh brilliantly weaves the whole thing together in the end.

The underlying question running through my mind during the entire movie was "why am I bored?" Damon is phenomenal, the writing is really funny, especially the inner monologue thoughts about polar bears and wondering whether we all have a sentence that if we say it, it will kill us, but I was bored. The movie is set in the early 90s obviously, but Soderbergh has gone out of his way to make it look like the 1970s, why? I do not know, but it bothered me a bit. Also, the strong presence of stand up comedians in small roles was distracting: Joel McHale, Tom Papa, Patton Oswalt, Paul S. Tompkins, and the Smothers Brothers all popped up in small roles, which was just weird for me. I know Soderbergh said he cast them all because he likes the comic energy, but Oswalt as a Government lawyer just did nothing for me.

The Informant! is written and acted as a comedy, and it has laugh out loud moments, but the joke is never made truly clear. Or at least, who the joke is on is never made clear. It never all out fails on any level, but something about it is just boring. Maybe it is the basic story that bored me, but I was checking my watch a lot. It also goes on a little too long considering the climax ends and the movie goes for another almost 15 or 20 minutes. Damon is getting a little Oscar buzz for his role, but since The Oscars never go for comedies, I doubt he will end up in the running, even though he does excellent work. He is nuanced, funny, interesting and ultimately very very sad.

Soderbergh has once again made a movie his way and it is hard to find fault with the man for making a movie on his terms. My guess is that this movie could have easily been a more serious thriller, but Soderbergh thought of it as a more comedic romp and he succeeds in ringing the funny, but I wonder if some of the funny came at the determent of the overall story. The supporting cast does not have much to do, but Scott Bakula does some good work as a kind of frazzled F.B.I agent but it is all overshadowed by this kind of boring storytelling.

Final Grade: C+