Review of The Informant (2008) by Tonypolito — 13 Aug 2010

What's not to like? You get the 1990s true story about one of the very few major corporations ever actually caught red-handed organizing its industry's price-fixing schemes. (Oh, you were thinking a lot of industries don't do it?).

Plus you get an quickie-seminar on how executives simply pay phony invoices to their own paper corporations to quietly perk themselves zillions of dollars with a wink-wink from the Board of Directors. (I must have missed the chapter in "Wealth of Nations" that explains how free markets prevent that sort of thing.).

Plus you get a quirky, humorous character study about "the informant" who's a pathological - but extremely intelligent - liar. And what a fascinating web he weaves. He's a crook, a felon, a liar, a hero and pathetic victim all rolled into one. Not many films hold a true-enough protagonist so diverse -- or so interesting he's currently on the short list for a Presidential pardon.

Plus Matt Damon delivers him well. And a dash of '60s fonting and '60s sitcom-styled background music thrown in for giggles.

Earns a Disc Construction Razzie: It must be a new industry record, TEN trailers fronting the main event, totaling over 20 minutes. What overpaid industry exec thinks home viewers actually sit there like theater-goers and watch those things? And yet not one extra, not even scene selection, just languages. WB, whaz up wit dat?

RECOMMENDATION: It's no belly-roar, but it's a must-see for any student of business.