The Informant!

With The Informant! (and yes, the exclamation mark is part of the title), filmmaker Steven Soderbergh seems to be trying to channel the spirit or at least mimic the offbeat comic style of the Coen Brothers. His take on the true story of a whistle blower who brought down a major food corporation involved in a price fixing scheme, without telling the Feds about his own embezzling and dirty dealings up front, is breezy and sometimes charmingly off the wall. Not exactly the tone you'd expect from such a story. It's this unexpected take on the story that grabs our attention most of the time, rather than the story itself.

Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) admit up front that they're going to be playing loose with the facts, with an opening disclaimer that pretty much states that many of the facts have been dramatized or changed. (The disclaimer ends with a defiant "So there!") If the exclamation mark in the title didn't set you off, this is not a subtle movie. It's broad and breezy, and sometimes resembles kind of a live action cartoon set in a world of corporate morons. Even the music seems charmed by its own whimsy, with its retro light-hearted 70s style that sounds like something out of a cheesy sitcom. The film's star, Matt Damon, even looks a little like a cartoon character himself with his nerdy hair and mustache, and puffed up face. He's a Vice President at Archer Midland Daniels (ADM) named Mark Whitacre , who gets fed up with the price fixing and illegal activities his company frequently participates in. He turns informant for the F.B.I., and starts kind of getting caught up in the spy business, secretly recording and video taping meetings, and getting his fellow employees to name names and information. He gets so wrapped up, he even starts referring to himself as 0014. ("Because I'm twice as smart as 007"!)

So far, so good. But it gets a lot more complicated. The agents that Mark is getting the information for (portrayed here by Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) learn too late that he hasn't been telling them the truth from the very beginning. It seems there's some details Mark left out, details that include him stealing money from the company and forging papers. The FBI is left with egg on their face, and even though Mark can't seem to get his facts right, he refuses to see the fact that he's done anything wrong. After all, he brought down a lot of corrupt individuals within his company. He did the right thing, didn't he? His wife, Ginger (Melanie Lynskey), stands by his side, both in private and in front of the media, which starts camping outside his front door when word of his informant activities and secret crimes gets out. To say that Mark is an optimist would be an understatement. Not only does he see himself as doing nothing wrong, but he also thinks he'll be able to take control of the company because of his actions. Since the story was big news when it happened, it's not a spoiler to reveal that Mark did end up going to prison for his own crimes, and even got a longer sentence than those he helped the Feds capture.

A little bit of self-whimsy goes a long way, and in The Informant!, it goes so far as to render some potentially interesting elements of the story completely mute. We never fully get to see how all of this affects his wife. We see her support him, but we never truly learn if she does it out of loyalty to him, or if she really and truly believes that he has done nothing wrong. Is she just as self-delusional as Mark comes across? The fluffy and light hearted tone works well when Mark is working as a bungling informant, never exactly sure of what he is doing, but somehow always getting exactly the kind of incriminating evidence he needs, but whenever the story turns to the personal side of the story, the tone works against it. Damon's performance is fine throughout, but it remains a caricature from beginning to end. We never truly get inside his head, although the movie does provide us with many personal monologues telling us what Mark is thinking about.

This is an odd movie that works sometimes because of its bizarre tone, and sometimes not. My reaction seemed to switch back and forth from going along with the approach, and sometimes being annoyed by it. So, I guess this should be read as a somewhat positive, but mainly middle of the road review. I do kind of wish the movie was a little bit more savage with its satire. At this point of the economic crisis, the movie could have taken some big swipes at corporate crooks and big business, but everything is mainly handled with kid gloves here. The main intention does not seem to be to truly explain what happened, but to ridicule Whitacre. He comes off as a narrow-minded, self-congratulating buffoon, while everyone else at the ADM office involved in the scandal are basically ignored. Instead, we get some bizarre cameos including Patton Oswalt, the Smothers Brothers, and cartoon voice acting legend, Frank Welker, in a rare live action appearance as Mark's father. Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but I would have liked more meat to the story and less quirky cameos.

Yesterday, I described Jennifer's Body as an experiment that didn't work out as well as it should have. The Informant! is a better movie, but could probably be summed up the same way. You can tell that everyone involved was having fun making this movie, but maybe they should have just spent a little more time going deeper. This is a film that is sometimes enjoyable, but always flawed. Sure is an odd little movie, though.

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