Review of The Informant! (2009) by Wxwax — 24 Nov 2010

Years ago I worked for a guy who seemed to be a pretty good egg. Short guy, a bit of a Napolean complex. But also a bit of a swashbuckler, friendly, willing to take chances. Exciting to work for. And what stories he had about his life: successful news director, A-7 pilot in the Air National Guard, award-winning photo-journalist. Never been fired in a business that eats its own.

Then I met the guy who'd fired him. And all his stories came crumbling down. Pretty much every one of them a pack of lies. Got so bad he tried to take me down with him when he got canned for a second time. Mark Whitacre's just like him. Whitacre's the guy whose secret tapes help make a price-fixing case against agri-giant Archer Daniels Midland. Working undercover for the FBI for two-and-a-half years, Whitacre assiduously recorded meetings with ADM's competitors at which production levels and prices were fixed. But the more the FBI learned about Whitacre the more it wondered if it was prosecuting the wrong case. Whitacre's life was a hopeless maze of lie piled upon lie. And he embezzled. A lot. In The Informant! director Steven Soderbergh's tells Whitacre's story in a style that is wry, oddly cheerful and yet deeply, deeply cynical. That Soderbergh is after bigger fish than a mere embezzler should be clear from his casting of the enormously sympathetic and likable Matt Damon as the embezzler-in-chief. Damon's uncomfortably convincing as a guy with strange energy who's spinning tales from the opening minute to the last. But Soderbergh treats him almost affectionately. Because in Soderbergh's worl, Whitacre's on the bottom rung of a ladder in which everyone's working an angle, all the way to the top. ADM, the FBI, federal prosecutors, attorneys, the media... no-one's dealing an honest hand. In a world that's so thoroughly corrupt and bumbling, Whitacre's embezzled millions begin to look like small potatoes. So it's kind of funny to watch him make them dance to his tune.

I found The Informant! to be simultaneously entertaining and alienating. There really isn't a character you truly like, except perhaps for Whitacre's eternally supportive wife, and she's a bit of a dim bulb. If the film works it's because Soderbergh refuses to bring the doom and gloom.