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ShareFilm: The Informant
Cast: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynsky
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Rating: * * *
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, scripted by Scott Z. Burns, based on the book The Informant (A True Story) by Kurt Eichenwald, this film is a light-hearted goofy take on the zealous but wildly delusional whistleblower, Mark Whitacre (a chubbed-out Damon), a biochemist suffering from a bi-polar condition, who was a rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). The script is a compressed version of the 600-pager true story and the narrative is distilled quite favourably.
Whitacre exposes his company's multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI and wears a wire to collect solid irrefutable evidence, imagining himself to be a de-facto secret agent (Agent 0014 because he is twice as smart as Bond) and conveniently forgetting about his own culpability in the scam.
The almost constant flow of Mark's thoughts through a voiceover designed to establish the fluctuating streams of consciousness he experiences gives the film it's most potent moments. The film is amusing, albeit seemingly trite and farcical, is intermittently engaging but not exactly fulfilling. The humour is dark and ironic but the irony is not easily realised.
The plot is expectedly bizarre, making the entire effort appear odd-ball goofy despite its deadly serious intent at exposing corporate malfeasance. Marvin Hamlisch's score lends earnest self-importance to what transpires on screen.
Damon's performance is quite adept and convincing. It's the lack of sharpness in Soderbergh's vision that eventually puts the brakes on the enjoyment. His narrative form is distinctly lacking in force, depth and conviction.
