tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

Starring: Matt Damon, Lucas McHugh Carroll, Eddie Jemison, Rusty Schwimmer.
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Release Date: September 18, 2009
Running Time: 108 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Somber and relaxing music, a melody that can bring to mind images of a local bar playing mellow tunes while their population dwindles as late night turns to early morning, play to the opening credits of "The Informant!," a new film by director Steven Soderbergh. The era in which this languid music harkens back to is that of the 1940s-70s when private eyes had a hunger for what was right and a dispassion for what was wrong. As the music continues a brief case is carefully being assembled with tapes, recorders, pocket-sized ones and microphones. All instruments used to detect truth. Indeed times have changed since the era of classical private eyes who relied on instinct and their conscious rather than electronic devices. That is why the profession has been tainted and also that of the private eye's soul.
No matter how outrageously implausible the facts may be, the only sensible way to film "The Informant!" would be as a scathing comedy chronicling greed, corruption and self-delusion. The movie follows the true story of Archer Daniels Midland's biochemist Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) and his attempt to bring down the company he works for, a manufacturing company responsible for producing the ingredients we can't even pronounce on the side of food boxes, as he works as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The facts of the story are presented without a veil covering the heart of the matter. But they seem to take on the role of being pure escapist fun instead of a hardening drama closing in on one man's attempt to upend a conglomeration that finds pleasure in sour practices. This mission is carried out because of Whitacre's obsession with power and greed, and hopes of running the company himself. In the early 1990s he needed to weed out his competition in order for him to have a clear path as president of A.M.D.

The opposite can be said for A.D.M., whose manner wasn't to neglect their competition but to embrace them and work together to regulate price fixing. Lysine and other ingredients found on labels of food packaging proved to be viral. But when the FBI gets involved viruses aren't their main concern. The demoralizing process in which Fortune 500 companies mingle together to price their products to get more money out of their consumers is the fundamental problem. Since Whitacre brought the FBI into this situation due to the viruses they insist he go through a process of being informant to them and enemy to his company. The investigators are played with sly wit by Scott Bakula and Joel McHale. The two are able to form a relationship with Whitacre that goes beyond the limitations of him being just informant for them.

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Wearing hidden recorders and taping business meetings in a manner that suggests comical implications, Matt Damon goes that extra step Soderbergh's film doesn't go, and that is in the direction of maintaining a demeanor that borders more on the side of madness rather than comical. He has taken the role as a private eye who does not seem to comprehend not only the mess he will cause for the companies but his own life as well. Suppressing his own secrets consumes his very own being and his wife (Melanie Lynskey) helplessly watches on.

Soderbergh adds to Whitacre's madness by having a constant voice-over in the movie. It is Whitacre's own voice bringing up random topics almost always dealing with materialism or capitalism one way or another. Be it whether Whitacre is in a meeting or out shopping, his mind constantly wanders off topic. This added touch shows the darker side of Whitacre's life, a more frustrating side of a man trying to function properly in reality despite his conscious being overtaken by greed and petty information. Damon's performance, decked out in moustache, casual clothes and an extra 35 pounds, is the film's brightest asset. He allows us to view Whitacre as another face in the crowd, constantly looked over, but also conceals perfectly, with the occasional flourishes, psychotic behavior. Damon portrays Whitacre as being capable, that's the key word, of doing such absurd things. He is capable of all he does and, most importantly, capable of falling into oblivion.

Soderbergh has a knack, or at this point in his career it has evidentially become part of his repertoire, to perceive a plot and be able to tell it in an imaginative way, though "The Informant!" gets loopier and loopier as it progresses. His particular vision is so unique that his films unleash their shackles that bind them to genre filmmaking. Soderbergh's great films (most recently being the four hour epic "Che") extend past genre and embody a Soderbergh world that holds a fixed criterion for truth and ambition. "The Informant!" gets truth right, while ambition struggles to cling on to a sturdy facet of either comedy or despair.

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