The Informant!: A Fat Matt Damon and Director Soderbergh Will Leave You Kicking Yourself–In a Good Way.

Posted by ScuzzBuster

September 21, 2009

While it’s not always the earmark of a great movie by any means, I love it when a film forces me to dwell on it intermittently the next day. I saw The Informant! last night and I walked out swimming in thoughts about the movie, mainly the character of Mark Whitacre, expertly brought to life by Matt Damon who packed on the pounds to take this part that’s well outside of his standard roles. Quite frankly, I’m not sure how good Damon’s performance is in this because it took me an entire 24 hours after the film to sort out the complexities of the character. I guess that means it was pretty darned “Okay.”

I went into this film cold. I knew nothing about this case or the character beyond the trailers which really only scratch the surface of what this film is about. I knew it was about the price fixing allegations against agri-giant ADM in the 1990s and that Damon was playing the executive at ADM who worked with the FBI to bring the executives responsible down. I recommend seeing the film clean, because I have to admit, I was more duped by the first two acts of this film than I care to admit, which is why I had to spend so much time today between spreadsheet formulas replaying certain scenes and moments in my head. While this isn’t really a “twist” ending film, I have to compare this to The Sixth Sense in the sheer number of boots up my rear I’m giving myself over the first two acts of the film in retrospect. There are scenes here and there throughout the film that stick out as odd and unrelated to anything, then they just kind of pass by and you let them go. However, all these things start to add up and you suddenly start realizing in the last act that there was something entirely different going on than you what you were lead to believe on screen.

And by the end, I’m so pleased thatI got duped that I refuse to go into any details in the review. If you have found out too much about the film already, there’s still a very funny and odd film experience in front of you, but I have a real admiration for a film that pulls the carpet out from under me the way this one did. The thing that makes this even more special is that it doesn’t “yank” the carpet out from under you. It pulls it slowly out from under you, telling you all the way that it’s doing so while waving it’s other hand in the air to distract you from the fact that it conspires from the start to land you on your rear end. I spent so much time trying to decide of if the character of Mark Whitacre was really as naive as he appeared or whether it was his mental disorder brought on by his bi-polar personality I totally missed what was going on right underneath the audience’s nose.

Enough mystery and let me just say that The Informant! is a very nice piece of work from Steven Soderbergh. I was bit floored during the opening credits to see that Marvin Hamlisch produced the score. If you’re a film buff I’m sure you’re familiar with Hamlisch as a veteran of film scores going all the way back to Woody Allen’s Bananas in 1971, the film which inspired Soderbergh to call Hamlisch. His score for this film is mix of brilliant mis-direction and humor. The entire first two-thirds of the film is scored precisely like a situation comedy. It’s not overbearing by any means, but it is a huge factor in allowing the movie to simply play like a light comedy. Had this film been scored differently it could have fallen into a completely different genre. It may have worked that way, too, but there are moments that could be ominous and foreboding or uncomfortable and instead, Soderbergh and Hamlish go completely for playing it for cute, light humor. It’s almost a surreal rhythm.

In a sense, The Informant! sets up the audience almost as brashly and unapologetically as Whitacre and the FBI set up the Archer Daniel Midland Corporation for price fixing in the film. In the end a lot of people get what’s coming to them, but it’s it not necessarily who you might think or why.
I can’t honestly say whether The Informant! is one of the best films I’ve seen this year. If it is, I feel a little guilty saying it, but I do really appreciate it for what it set out to do and how well it succeeded with me in particular. I love the fact that Matt Damon went for this role and gave us something totally different. Scott Bakula and Joel McHale slip in nicely as the two FBI agents working on the 2 year sting operation with Damon’s Witacre. In addition to that, Soderbergh has sprinkled in a flurry of stand up comics in small supporting roles like Tom Wilson (best know outside of his stand up as Biff from the Back the Future films), Patton Oswalt, and Bob Zany.

I had a great time with it, but it’s going to be one of those flicks that just doesn’t do it for everyone. Five people walked out of my showing with about 15 minutes left and I’m still not sure if it was because they just weren’t digging it or they thought it was over. Events in the final act of the film are going to be make some film goers feel left out in the cold, betrayed and lied to. That will be a totally unfair judgment though. You may get to the end of this thinking “I knew exactly where this was going” or thinking “I can’t believe I didn’t see where that was going” but either way I think there’s great flick in the middle of it.