Review: The Informant!

We didn't get tickets for A Serious Man, and still had the vouchers to use up.  Fearful of surpassing our quota of foreign language art house flops, we chose Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!  The exclamation point, by the way, is part of the title; it was not me getting really excited about the fact that we picked that movie!  This concludes my annoying use of exclamation points!

When I originally saw the title for this film in the festival guide, I immediately discounted it.  I didn't need to travel all the way to Toronto to see the next drama about how some corporate dude risks everything to buck the system and save us all from the evil corporate giants.  These movies are entertaining and all, but I can wait a month or two to see it in the theater when I feel like spending a couple hours choking down an $8 bag of popcorn.  I'd heard that it was a true story, but the detail I'd missed until later, and what ultimately lead to its selection, was this fact: it's a comedy.  I was intrigued.

Soderbergh has proven to be a bit of a chameleon, dodging between the Oceans franchise and movies like Che and The Good German.  The script was developed by Scott Z. Burns from the non-fiction book by Kurt Eichenwald.  You probably haven't heard of Burns, but he helped write the last Bourne flick.  Matt Damon packed on 20 lbs. or so, by the looks of him, and grew a mustache for his role as Mark Whitacre.  Scott Bakula adds clout to the cast as FBI agent Brian Shepard.

Whitacre was an officer at Archer Daniels Midland in the late 80s and 90's, rising to President of their BioProducts division.  At the urging of his wife, he eventually became an FBI informant for a global price-fixing scheme at ADM, for which the company would pay out over a half billion dollars in fines and damages.  Whitacre himself would eventually be jailed for other charges unrelated to ADM's criminal activity.

None of that matters.  The movie is downright hilarious.  It begins with a disclaimer from the filmmakers explaining that certain liberties had been taken in the making of the film -- conversations are fictionalized, some characters are composites, etc. --concluding with a very distinct "So there."

What follows is a zany journey through the next three or five years.  I don't really remember how long exactly, as I was laughing too hard to keep track of the chronology.  The movie is interspersed with Whitacre's voiced-over inner thoughts, frequently having nothing in particular to do with the plot.  Trust me, it works.  The movie's tone, similar to Austin Powers, is a blend of various influences from the late 60's and early 70's. Think Get Smart's dimwitted government man, Mary Tyler Moore's font, mixed with the flair of The Rockford Files or Charlie's Angels.

It wasn't just funny, though.  It really is a fascinating tale that never gets predictable.   Damon gives a wonderful performance, and I don't know that I've ever liked him in a movie this much, not that I have anything against him like some people.  I went to this movie expecting a 7, but I liked it more than that.  I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were a few Oscar nominations thrown its way.  My imdb rating: 8/10.