The Informant! immediately comes across like something the Coen Brothers might have thought up, and of course by “thought up” I mean giving their interpretation of based-on-a-true-story historical facts. But this ain’t a Coen Brothers joint, it’s from Steven Soderbergh who sandwiched this film between the stolid Girlfriend Experience and something referred to by IMDB as “Untitled Gary Spalding Project.” The Informant is in perfect keeping with the modern business climate, even though it takes place about 15 years before the current crash. The story itself is one of those “almost-too-impossible-to-believe” tales, which makes it all the more engaging as shifty executives, ineffective government agents and the general corporate environment gets skewered.
Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre and he is exceptional. Packing on the pounds and growing a ridiculous moustache, he has the appearance of a slick used car salesman, and it isn’t until the movie unfolds that you realize just how apt a description that is. Whitacre was a middle manager at Decatur, Illinois based Archer Daniels Midland, an agri-business developing the corn extract called lysine. Through a convoluted plan about corporate blackmail and sabotage, Whitacre brings the ADM to the FBI’s attention and then confesses to two agents that there is no sabotage and that the real crime is the price fixing of lysine amongst several international corporations. With Whitacre’s help, ADM’s price fixing is exposed and it looks like several company execs will be doing jail time. And then the story really gets interesting.
Soderbergh’s pretty good at making you think that the film is about one thing, when it’s really about something else all along. Whitacre initially seems like a dim-witted, misguided, but genuinely decent man that sees wrong doing at his company and is genuinely committed to rooting it out. What nobody knew at time though was that Whitacre was bipolar. So Damon plays things big but in a subtle kind of way that doesn’t draw attention to itself despite the man’s recklessness and grandiosity. Whitacre narrates the story with these brilliantly nonsensical non sequiturs that should be a symptom of the character’s deep seeded mental issues, but you’re have too much fun listening to the oddities coming out his mouth because you think he’s just one of those nuisance trivia buffs. And special thanks for that shout out to Regina, Saskatchewan.
Despite the complexities of agri-business and what turns out to be a rather convoluted embezzlement scheme, Soderbergh keeps the action easy to follow, and allows Damon’s flawed but likeable Whitacre to guide the audience. At the same time though our hero is deeply flawed, and gets even more flawed as the movie wears on. Sure Whitacre’s pocketing several million dollars of ADM’s money, but he’s still oddly sympathetic because you’re not sure if he was just bad, misguided or whether the stress of living a double life as an FBI mole for three years simple got to him in his diminished mental state. There’s no easy answer, and Damon’s not likely to help you because he plays things pretty close to the chest. The movie gives us remarkable access to the character, but you never really know what he’s thinking deep inside.
Soderbergh’s film crosses genre boundaries making it an office comedy, legal drama, and corporate espionage police movie all in one go. The film leaves you satisfied and basically does the impossible in this current economic climate by humanizing a man that’s basically a corporate criminal. In what I’m sure will be an eventual slate of movies that pay tribute to, or about directly, the economic meltdown of 2008 (next up: Michael Moore’s Capitalism), The Informant manages to be complex yet told simply at the same time. It’s a thinking man’s The Office, only Michael Scott is much more dangerous that he appears yet no less aloof and driven by self-interest. A fascinating portrayal of a deeply disturbed man, and an industry that’s marred in more controversy than most people realize, The Informant has nothing to hide.
