Review of The Informant! (2009) by Dawdlingpoet — 26 Nov 2021

This is a crime drama with some comedic elements to it and a surprisingly jovial tone, certainly at the start. It covers themes of power, greed and competition/one-upmanship i.e. 'dog eat dog' I suppose. You could argue that this film is a film of its time, in that was released around about 2009, when there was a bigger awareness of some of the more larger scale instances of fraudulent financial investments and moreso price fixing. When I think of those terms, companies such as Goldman Sachs and Enron come to mind. It is clearly quite a corporate focussed film, presumably based on real-life stories. I found it somehow amusing the use of chirpy, upbeat instrumental pieces of music (think jazz type sounds) played during fairly serious scenes. I felt it helped to make the film seem more of a parody - the characters seemed somehow caricatured, particularly the main character, Mark. It probably sounds a bit distasteful to have a film about such a serious topic and for it to be treated in a seemingly light hearted way but I felt that it worked relatively well. I thought it had the feel of a retro TV show, a crime detective show possibly, although it feels a bit unfair to describe this primarily as a crime drama, as pace wise it isn't the same as your average crime action film. There is little in the way of visual effects, fights and the like, if thats your bag, so to speak, then this will likely come across as slow and dull and may be best avoided. This is definitely more of a character focussed film overall.

Narration can be heard in some scenes - I presumed the narration to be by Matt Damon, who plays Mark. It gives an insight in to his way of thinking at the time, how he sees things. There is a definite naivety to his character, which makes him somewhat endearing. Its clear that he appears to be at the deep end of things, trying to juggle his job and secretly being involved with the FBI. He tries to act like he's on top of things, when he's clearly got a lot to learn. To me, Matt seemed, if anything, perhaps a bit too young to portray Mark - he seemed a little out of place somehow, although I definitely still enjoyed the film. He becomes understandably paranoid as he tries to out-guess what will happen and stay ahead of the game. Mark's personality is interesting - I'm not sure quite how to describe it, other than that he seems very basic and straight laced (even though ultimately he isn't), somehow 2D in a 3D world.

Content wise, this film features some strong language, no violence and no sex content (other than one derrogatory reference to pregnancy). Its not frightening or scary, so is unlikely to upset people and thus I presume it has its 15 rating due to the fairly strong swear words present.

The film had this feeling of artificiality present but that was mainly brought across by the mix of jaunty music played and the narration - the sense of a feeling of people being upbeat even though the situation wasn't especially optimistic. I found it somehow satisfying seeing how the plot developed, the actions of people and the sheer bravado shown by those being cornered. Sadly I can imagine that, given what has been in the news and written about in the last while, people in big business may act and feel similarly.

The film seems, visually, stylish to an extent, with dark-ish lighting used in some scenes, with a yellow tinge added, that made it seem somehow quite dated. Its unsurprising given the film is directed by Steven Soderbergh, more well known as the director of the also very stylish Oceans 11, Oceans 12 and Oceans 13 films.

There was a stronger sense of style present when, at the start of some scenes, the location and year portrayed appeared in a quite old fashioned font (don't ask me which one, I wouldn't know). It seemed to me, visually, as if it was primarily set in the 1980s, although the years quoted during the film date from the 1980s to the 1990s.

I'm not entirely sure what else to say about this - it felt like quite a clever film, although perhaps if anything it tried a bit too hard to be clever - I remember thinking that it felt very much like it was trying to be witty in a sense that didn't entirely ring true to me. I did find it quite entertaining and there were the ocassional amusing moments, although I wouldn't say its by any means a hilarious film, hence me mentioning the 'comedic elements' as the last element of the genre. The parody feel of the film is quite amusing but its not the sort of film your going to laugh out loud to really - big business and how one company out-does another isn't the sort of thing I could easily find in any way hilarious really. I suppose you could say that the term 'ascerbic wit' applies here. There is an element of sarcasm, I'd say. I feel that, ultimately, this film is a good film but certainly not by any means a great, or excellent, film, so I'll begrudgingly give this a 7 out of 10 rating on that basis.