Review: The Informant!

The Informant!

OPENING: 09/18/2009

STUDIO: Warner Bros.

RUN TIME: 108 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Based on a tattle-tale.

Opening Statement
The talented Steven Soderbergh has spent roughly half his career creating ambitious art house films and the other half making slick, mainstream crime capers. The Informant! falls somewhere in-between, offering a movie that is by turns a giddy crime comedy and an attentive psychological character study. Its peculiar tone may be off-putting to some, but it’s a film that deserves some attention.

Facts of the Case
Mark Whitaker (Matt Damon, The Bourne Identity) is a high-ranking executive working for Lysine development company ADM. Whitaker has knowledge of the company’s involvement in a price-fixing scandal, and decides to do something about it. Before he even figures out exactly what he’s gotten into, Mark finds himself working as an undercover informant for the FBI. The only problem is, his involvement in the corporate scandal might just be a little bit thicker than he initially indicated. Can he possibly bring ADM down without bringing himself down with it? For that matter, can he even complete his undercover activities without completely blowing the FBI’s carefully-constructed case against the corporation?

The Evidence
The Informant! is one of the oddest films I’ve seen this year. Not surreal, David Lynch odd, but rather a sort of "how does one go about categorizing this thing?" odd. It’s an unusual movie that tells an unusual story about an unusual man. It could have easily gone in a much more comfortable and recognizable direction, dramatically transformed into an intense thriller akin to Michael Mann’s The Insider, the story of a whistle-blower attempting to take down a large corporation. Or Soderbergh could have turned on that Ocean’s 11 pizazz and created a comedic corporate thriller akin to this year’s entertaining Duplicity. While certain story elements have indeed been altered for dramatic purposes (as indicated in the film’s cheeky disclaimer), Soderbergh chooses to embrace the bewildering aspects and use them as the springboard for his entire film.

The Informant! is actually quite a repetitive experience. Soderbergh visually layers everything in an unattractive orange haze, cranks up a cheesy-as-they-come original score courtesy of film music veteran Marvin Hamlisch, and lets us watch as he peels back layer after layer after layer of Mark Whitaker. Oh, and then another layer. Wait, one more. Okay, maybe a couple more. Is that everything? Hold on. Whitaker is seemingly both a compulsive truth-teller and a compulsive liar, and attempting to wrap your brain around the precise motivations for his actions is a bit like trying to catch a greased pig.

This is surely some of the strongest work Matt Damon has done. Though he’s a very capable leading man, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Damon disappear into a part quite as successfully as he does in The Informant!. Never mind that he packs on the pounds and sports a goofy mustache and glasses. Damon’s real accomplishment is convincing us that we are dealing with a plainspoken, straightforward, bumbling fella. Just when we think we’ve sized him up, he’ll pull the rug out from underneath us. Then we re-analyze him and adjust our assessment just before we have the rug pulled out from underneath us yet again. Damon’s amusing stream-of-consciousness narration and seeming vulnerability keep pulling us back in and allowing us to take our guard down. It works as both a comedic performance and a credible characterization of a real human being.

Many films insert a character designed to serve as an audience surrogate. For instance, consider The Great Buck Howard, in which we watched the antics of John Malkovich through the eyes of Colin Hanks. The Informant! seems to use almost every character other than Whitaker, as a variety of businessmen, lawyers, and government agents respond with a combination of frustration, bewilderment, and amusement to Mark’s seemingly incomprehensible actions. Soderbergh litters his supporting cast with a litany of B-list comedians (Tom and Dick Smothers, Scott Adsit, Andrew Daly, Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins, and others), though seems to be using them more for their distinct faces and presences rather than their comedic virtues. The most memorable of these supporting players are Scott Bakula and Joel McHale as Whitaker’s FBI contacts. Their blend of astonishment and pity, as they watch their man work, seems just about right and their contrasting facial profiles play off each other nicely.

Closing Statement
When the dust has settled, one puzzling aspect remains: attempting to figure out just what Soderbergh was hoping to achieve with The Informant!. Is it a condemnation of corporate crime? It’s too gentle and forgiving to be terribly effective in that regard. Does the atypical musical score serve as an indication that Soderbergh intends the film to be a kitschy lark? It’s too grounded in reality for me to buy that. Is it a meditation on the effects of… well, to tell you be a spoiler… but is it? I doubt it. While the message may be a bit hazy, one thing is not: this is a film worth seeing. It’s a bit too much of a curiosity to make many end-of-the-year top ten lists, but whatever it is, it works. Give it a look.

The Verdict
8/10

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