‘Twice as good as 007′

Much like its central protagonist, “The Informant!” is a solid film of bipolar perception that is so smart, it’s stupid. Laymans might refer to him as a “little tattle-tale,” but I prefer to call it one of Matt Damon’s finest performances, and one that could very easily put him under the Oscar radar in the coming months.

While the events of the film may be based on facts, director Steven Soderbergh doesn’t use the essence of “truth” as a powering mechanism to get viewer’s attention; instead, he uses common corporate world courtesy to help us understand what is happening and why. So of course, it’s only fitting to have “corruption” play the role of antagonist.

Covering numerous bases of American capitalism, “The Informant!” follows the journey of Mark Whitacre (Damon), a beloved employee at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) who is rising fast in the business industry and earning a golden salary through a series of underhanded deals. These deals encompass what he quickly discovers to be a price-fixing scam, and despite his great reputation at the office, Whitacre decides to “blow the whistle” on his company and work as an informant for the FBI.

It sounds like all-fun-and-games for Mr. “Agent 0014″ (he’s “twice as good as 007″), but unfortunately he forgot to explain the details of his own personal benefits to the feds. Now with his income continuously rising from the same conspiracy which he has sworn to help destroy, Whitacre must keep his head on straight while a couple of federal agents grow increasingly frustrated over his wild exploits. Obviously they’re righteously skeptical as to whether or not he can be trusted. But the bigger question here is: can Whitacre trust himself?

Trudging over a period of four years (1992-96), the opening segments of “The Informant!” are filled with background information regarding ADM and the conspiracy which they have formulated, but as soon as Whitacre turns the other cheek, the film belongs entirely to Damon from that point on. At first, I feared that this sudden shift in focus would be crippling, but this is one of those rare occasions where strong acting can really disguise thematic imbalance.

Sporting a goofy mustache on top of a few pounds gained (30 to be exact), Damon creates a very unpredictable package of dark humor and satire in Whitacre. But what makes the character so special is not-so-much the cocky attitude in his personality, but his ability to move along without hardly any motivation for his actions. Why did he betray the very company (and people) that made him rich? Why does he suddenly feel like he should be a big-shot cop? Is it just because he gets to wear a wire? We have no idea, and Soderbergh clearly doesn’t care to tell us, but if one of the professional agents were to sit him down in an interrogation room, I don’t think the bipolar Whitacre himself could offer any better explanations.

Despite Damon’s iconic handling of the film’s heaviest weights, there is still somewhat of an unsettling structure to the flow of the plot. I always enjoy a few surprises here and there in any film, but there are so many twists and turns throughout “The Informant!” that it almost feels as if the film itself is lost at certain points, and doesn’t quite know what to do next.

Now, there is some redemption in knowing that Kurt Eichenwald (author of the book) helped produce the film, as well as the use of voice-over narrations to back up the action, but by the time we reach the conclusion, everything just falls right into place without much shock or awe. I guess it’s practically a curse for any true story film to have that “autopilot” ending, but nevertheless, it is certainly one hell of a shaky route along the way.

However, regardless of how much we are left in the dark on reasoning and suspense, the two things that become only more and more clear as the film progresses are that Soderberg was the only director who could make this film right, and Damon was the perfect choice for the lead role.

Once the final shot was cut, I had a laundry list of compliments to feed his performance, but on the last note in my pad, I asked myself one question: what would this film be without Jason Bourne? And now as I sit here completing this review, I feel confident in saying: probably not worth a damn.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 18 2009. Filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry