The Informant!, starring Matt Damon(The Departed, The Good Shepherd), announces itself as a comedy straight from the get-go with a title card announcing it’s based off a true story, but in a fairly humorous manner. However, while the film about a whistle-blower at a food processing company accused of price fixing is quite funny, its main problem is that it tries too hard to go for the yuks, rather than just letting the situations within the tale carry it.
As the story unfolds, we are in the early 90’s, and Mark Whitacre(Damon) is a high ranking executive at Archer Daniels Midland(ADM), a processing conglomerate which makes lysine and other processed chemicals and nutrients found in nearly everything we eat. Suffering from guilt for participating in clandestine meetings company higher-ups Mick Andreas(Tom Papa) and Terry Wilson(Rick Overton) have had with their foreign competition on how to fix prices in the market—and thereby guaranteeing profits while eliminating healthy competition—Whitacre confides to FBI agent Brian Shepard(Scott Bakula), when the agent arrives at the ADM offices on other business. Soon, Whitacre is drawn into a world where he must play two roles; loyal corporate flunky and unintentional FBI spy while wearing a wire to capture his bosses’ shady deals on tape. Eventually the stress gets to him and through a unique combination of his own braggadocio and outright stupidity, Whitacre finds himself about to fall off the tightrope on the wrong side of the pit.
The Informant! is a decent film but not exceptional, more entertaining toward the midway point than anywhere else, where the actors are finally just allowed to shine in their roles without the overbearing film score by Marvin Hamlisch(Bedtime Stories, Fired Up!) constantly intruding in an attempt to sound “wacky”, or Damon’s meandering train of thought voiceovers which pop in to show that he could be a complete scatterbrain, as it steps over what we’re supposed to believe could be key moments of dialogue. Once the reason for the voiceover is revealed however, one can appreciate it more fully. However, this still doesn’t completely detract from the fact that the voiceover is overused, especially around the midway point where otherwise the film takes more of a turn for the better.
The performances are fairly sound across the board. Damon is very entertaining as Whitacre, and there are solid appearances put in by Clancy Brown(SpongeBob SquarePants, The Twenty) as an ADM lawyer, and Thomas F. Wilson(the Back to the Future trilogy, Psych) as a corporate security expert. Melanie Lynskey(Two and a Half Men, The L Word) is serviceable as Mark’s wife Ginger, and Scott Bakula(Enterprise, Chuck) is here to remind us he’s just plain ol’ Scott Bakula; never horrible, never bad, never truly outstanding…which is always oddly reassuring.
The direction by Steven Soderbergh(the Ocean’s Eleven trilogy, The Good German) captures the mood of the ‘90’s favorably well, yet is nothing to write home about. Luckily for the film, the script by Scott Z. Burns(The Bourne Ultimatum, What We Take From Each Other), adapted from the book by Kurt Eichenwald, while not exactly helping Damon in his pursuit to get to the truth about who Mark Whitacre was at this point in his life, doesn’t exactly hamper him either.
The Informant! is definitely a popcorn movie…easily digestible while watching, but fluffy and light enough that you’ll completely forget about it once you leave the theater.
unbelievably average!
Golly: Matt Damon shines in a film that otherwise isn't quite polished enough.
Whitacre(Damon, left) is part of an Evil Corporation he must bring down...if he has the brains to do it right.
