Josh Reviews The Informant!

The exclamation point in the title of Steven Soderbergh’s new film The Informant! should tip you off right away that this isn’t another ultra-serious film about a corporate whistle-blower a la The Insider.  (That’s not a knock against The Insider, by the way, which is a terrific film.)  But Steven Soderbergh has something else in mind with this movie.

A plump Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a biochemist who is also the youngest vice president of A.D.M., a giant manufacturer of, among other things, the amino acid lysine that is a core component of much of the food that we eat here in the U.S.  In the 1990’s, Mark supplied the F.B.I. with evidence implicating A.D.M. in a price-fixing scheme with several other worldwide companies in their business.  But, of course, this based-on-a-true-story tale (originally covered in the book The Informant: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald) is a lot more complicated than that.

Steven Soderbergh is an extraordinarily intelligent filmmaker, and when his films work for me (Out of Sight, The Limey, Traffic, Full Frontal) or when they don’t (The Good German, Solaris, and Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve which convinced me I didn’t need to see Thirteen), I always know that there will be something there of interest in the viewing.  Each of his films that I have seen has been remarkably different in style and tone from all the rest.  He consistently reinvents himself as a movie-maker, and that is endlessly fascinating to me.

Here in The Informant!, he has managed to tell what is really a very serious story in a manner full of whimsy.  Matt Damon dances along the fine line between drama and farce with the elegance of an actor skilled in both arenas.  His bizarre, rambling voice-overs that run throughout the film are wonderful — my favorite part of the movie.  Not only are his non sequitur observations hilarious, they also embody the idea that this numbskull is really the hero of his own story.  This idea is further enhanced by Marvin Hamlisch’s wonderfully over-the-top score (in which he practically gives Mr. Whitacre his own theme music!).  All of that silliness could easily tip the film over into total lunacy, but Mr. Soderbergh keeps his hands firmly on the reins, making sure than the audience is kept engaged with Mark’s unfolding story.

I should also mention here that it’s absolutely terrific to see Scott Bakula (Dr. Samuel Beckett himself) in a big role as F.B.I. Special Agent Brian Shepard.  Bakula’s best roles have been mostly confined to TV for the past two decades, but he really is a wonderful actor with a lot of charisma.  He does great work here, and I’d love to see him in more movies down the line.

The Informant! is a bizarre little film.  It’s not for everyone — I could see some audience members having trouble figuring out a movie like this that skirts continuously between drama and comedy.  While I wouldn’t say that I walked out of the film thinking to myself “this is a film that I will definitely own on DVD,” I quite enjoyed it.  There seems to be an ever-shrinking market for small little films like this, and that’s a shame.  As long as Steven Soderbergh keeps making new weird and interesting movies like this one, I’ll keep going to see ’em.