The Informant!

The Informant! Steven Soderbergh, Director, 2009

 

HOOK: Tired of special effects movies and Jenifer Aniston, bet you’d enjoy a comedy about corporate price fixing. 

"Can you hear me now!"

 LINE:  “I’m Agent 0014 because I’m twice as smart as James Bond.” 

SINKER: The tip-off is the exclamation point at the end of the title.  

JOHN: There’s something appealing about the nervous, awkward, optimistic, delusional, rambling-voice-over kind of guy Damon plays (even about the Decatur, Illinois setting) that makes you not only like him, but fearful for the mess we think he’s getting into. He’s in charge of a lysine-manufacturing operation bleeding money. He tells his bosses that a mole is sabotaging the operation and that a confidential source will reveal all for ten million dollars. They call in the FBI. Soon the Damon character, Whitacre, is wowing them with allegations that ADM is involved with massive price-fixing. Hardly your regular Saturday night plot. Then something strange happens. If you saw the previews, as I have on a couple of occasions, you come prepared to believe Whitacre, but, as it turns out, that’s a mistake. And in making it you will not be alone in. As Whitacre plays the others, Soderbergh plays us. And I have to admit, I bought it hook, line and sinker.  

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: Damon is terrific and the rest of the cast is too. No one looks Hollywood. There’s an expression we have here in Wisconsin that I think might be apt for Whitacre. He’s a “country slicker.” Yet as endearing as he ends up being, there are some interesting points made along the way about price-fixing, the legal morass many investigations must find themselves in and, finally, about what kind of a person making millions would turn whistle-blower. Soderbergh casts comedians in many of the film’s key roles—especially attorneys, both for and against Whitacre; which exerts a reductive effect on the seriousness and substance of Whitacre’s legal battles. Damon’s non-sequitur voice over observations are priceless, and provide semi-conscious clues when looking back on the film that give us those, ”Why didn’t I see that?” moments. Maybe a little too much so. After all this is an indictment of a system—economic, legal and political—that endorses or rewards deception. We can laugh, but shouldn’t we also be worried? Who is being self-delusional now?   

“TWO PAWS Up” (3 BARKs out of four)