The Informant is a good movie, I will say that first off. It just is not what I anticipated. I suppose the trailer was a bit misleading, though the factual premise was not. The trailer made this new Steven Soderbergh film to be an uproarious dark comedy starring a heavier goofy Matt Damon as an executive turned informant for the FBI. This is true, it is a true story. It may not have been as funny as I thought it was going to be. In fact the amount of humour involved probably took place in reality.
The title character, the informant, is Mark Whitacre. He is a rising executive in the agribusiness Archer Daniels Midland. He knows his colleagues and employers are fixing prices and robbing the average man, taking them for millions every year. Through a sequence of events, Whitacre is brought into contact with the FBI and, due to his own guilty conscience and the encouragement of his wife, decides to rat on his company's criminal activity. This goes on for around five years as Whitacre accumulates facts and evidence against "the bad guys". Do they go to jail, yes. But unless you know your history, you won't be able to predict what becomes of Mark Whitacre.
The majority of the comedy you've already seen in the trailers: Mark's trouble with FBI surveillance, or his over conspicuousness, and his overall air of stupidity. Those moments do come, but believe me, Whitacre is not an idiot at all. By the end you will find him to be a much more complex and intriguing character who is more than just a goofball. The funniest part for me would be Mark's narration throughout the film. He does not recite exactly what happens in sequence per se, he explains it more with strange metaphors. Either that or he just goes on about weird thoughts he has: "Do polar bears know their noses are black", or a rather Lynchian idea for a TV show.
The film does run long, but I expected it because most films like these do. Maybe the unfulfilled promise of comedy was what disappointed me most. Other times the film feels uninteresting or lagging. But overall I enjoyed it. It's not a movie that needs to be seen in theatres, in fact this could be a very great film to watch at home.
As with most of his movies, indie filmmaker Steven Soderbergh implores much of his craft into this new project and gives it the charm he hands to his other works. A superb performance by Matt Damon, an versatile actor playing a wonderful character, puts this movie in the air. Damon is capable of playing many tones, he can be dramatic, scary, funny, or just easy going. He also made a different turn by gaining weight for his role, like Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull or Christian Bale in The Machinist. A majority of the cast includes comedians who perform great in sort of serious roles, these include Joel Mchale, Patton Oswalt, Tony Hale, and Eddie Jemison. Melanie Lynskie has a heartfelt role as Whitacre's tender but willful wife. Then the great turnout of long lost actor Scott Bakula, who I only know from Star Trek: Enterprise, as one the main FBI agents who works with Whitacre over the years.
In the end The Informant! succeeds with what it set out to do, but not with what it led us to believe it would do. That's okay with me. I still liked it. It was funny, smart, dramatic, endearing and really true. You don't have to see it in the theatre but it wouldn't hurt if you did.
This has been a somewhat enthusiastic review by Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading.
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