“The Informant!”




 

 

Directed by:
Steven Soderbergh

Starring:
Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynskey

MPAA
rating:
PG-13 (for adult language)

Running time:
1 hour, 48 minutes

Best suited for:
those aware the story is based on actual facts

Least suited for:
those looking for another posh “Ocean’s Eleven”

Steven Soderbergh’s mind must be a strange and wondrous place. The guy’s obviously a talented director. He’s as comfortable navigating the stylish, sassy thriller (“Ocean’s Eleven”), the tense narrative drama (“Traffic”) and eccentric, art-house oddities like “Bubble” and “Schizopolis.” After multiple viewings of the last, I’m still not certain of its category . . . or intent.

And, although diehard sci-fi snobs will disagree and probably throw stones, I also believe Soderbergh’s Kafkaesque sci-fi thriller “Solaris” is more insightful, certainly far more stylistically accessible, than Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 three-hour, Soviet-made flick of the same name. In other words, Soderbergh tends to get around.

Having gained sufficient audience reception with his “Ocean’s” trilogy and 2000’s “Erin Brockovich”—and after the two-part, socially conscious (or socialistically
conscious, depending on your POV) “Che” in 2008—Soderbergh is ready to flip the coin and once again reveal his more indie-based, cheeky side.

In “The Informant!” a plumped-up, toupeed Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a corporate biochemist and eventual whistle-blower who brings his company’s price-fixing scheme to the attention of the FBI.

Whitacre is a bit delusional, and also a very real person—but unless you know
that fact, the film may seem somewhat rambling, even incoherent.

Hence my biggest problem with “The Informant!” Some of us, critic and casual filmgoer alike, want to know little about a film before venturing forth into a theater. Preconceived notions can adversely affect one’s enjoyment, certainly one’s perception, of a film and are usually best left to topics like politics and religion.

Thus, I was only vaguely aware that “The Informant!” might have been based on a book, and midway through the film I wasn’t sure how much was fabricated, how much might be true.

As a fabrication “The Informant!” makes for a pretty lousy picture. It’s simply too implausible, as if some neophytic screenwriter were allowed carte blanche on a script, intent on infusing the plot with only the most unbelievable of situations.

Yet from what I’ve since discovered, “The Informant!” is based on fact, which takes appreciating the film (and certainly the character of Mark Whitacre) to an entirely different level.

So if there’s a flaw here, it’s in not making the audience acutely
aware of how entirely true “The Informant!” is. Based on journalist Kurt Eichenwald’s 2000 account, Mark Whitacre really did
do these things. Without divulging too much about the film, what Soderbergh presents is indeed largely factual. Knowing this only makes the funny parts funnier and the surreal parts more surreal.

“The Informant!”—and really, the film should be retitled “The Informant?”—is a dark, stupefying comedy, a kind of cinematic yin to Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” yang. Filmed with a lowbudget, muddily lit, barebones stylistic restraint, one can almost see “The Informant!” as an art-house docudrama—if not for Whitacre’s continual narrative non sequiturs, which, as it turns out, offer great insight into the man’s psychological condition. (Those constant voiceovers are a rousing plus
, by the way.)

On the minus side is Marvin Hamlisch’s ridiculously schlocky score, more like a compilation of disparate and really, really bad
’60s sitcom ditties that seem to lampoon the film more than support it. I found it annoying.

Again going for pluses, Matt Damon does an admirable job as the bumbling Mark Whitacre. Hard to believe this is the same guy beating up an assassin with a rolled-up newspaper in “The Bourne Identity.” Damon might not be a Jim Carrey clone, but he can whip up straight-faced funny quite well.

And Whitacre? . . . Well, for me he may just epitomize the current state of Corporate America: a little too cagey, a little too crazy to be trusted. And how much of “The Informant!” is
true? Hard to say. But I suspect this one’s another example of truth being far stranger than fiction.

 

 

 

 

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