Review of The Informant (2008) by Victoria T — 01 Sep 2010

Whether it's Mark Whitacre's rambling thoughts, or his continuous lies and and stealing, The Informant is surprisingly funny. Damon is a pure gem as Whitacre, a man who has it all, but can't keep his mouth shut, and is greedy beyond all imagination.

This is a highly original and very funny character brought to life by the often impressive Matt Damon. The man is making over 300k a year and still steals millions and in the meantime, he thinks he can blow the whistle on his own company for their illegal activity. He is so clueless that he thinks he will get all the top people put in jail, making him the new CEO of ADM. Also, what I thought was the funniest thing in the entire movie was he actually thought the ADM wouldn't notice the 11 million dollars he stole from forging checks. I don't think I have ever seen a character so sneaky and so hilariously clueless.

One of the interesting and sometimes funny aspects to the film is how Damon is always thinking about random things like how polar bears see each other. Is it their black noses? His thoughts are off-topic, but hilarious none-the-less.

You will spend the entire movie with a smirk on your face just wondering what Damon will get up to next. It's like what the judge said at Whitacre's trial - "You're not the normal person on trial, you have a great education, a wife, and three children." Whitacre just couldn't stop in his quest for greed. He thought he could make the FBI fools and ended up the bigger convict than ADM.

When Soderbergh is working with the likes of Damon instead of pornstars like Sasha Grey, he has great acting, and a great indie-style kind of direction. The one thing I noticed was off with The Informant was it's lighting, often I found it was far too bright. It's better to be too bright than too dark they say, but still it's very amateur in lighting and I thought Soderbergh would have learned about lighting techniques by now.

All in all, The Informant is another winner from Damon. This is a very underrated performance on his already impressive resume. He snakes his way into so much trouble you can't help but to laugh and love the character's aspirations.

Movie Breakdown -.

Writing: 20/25.

Directing:15/25.

Cinematography:5/25.

Acting:22/25.

Total: 62/100.