The Informant! (yes with the exclamation point, though no more for the rest of this review) positions itself as a wacky comedy and a sort of industrial espionage thriller, adapted from Kirt Eichenwald’s novel.
Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon as a kind of Talentless Mr. Ripley) imagines himself a master sleuth — or a master criminal — and most of the comedy in this movie is Mark’s internal monologue. I haven’t read the book, but the movie makes me want to. Mark goes from being a man with an adorable sense of importance to the inverse of a corporate shark; his machinations implode. The movie itself starts to slowly implode into a still-amusing but increasingly convoluted muddle of absurdity.
I was reminded of the short-lived but brilliant TV show Profit, except upside-down and inside-out. Whitacre is a whistleblower who draws the Feds’ attentions to his agricultural company, revealing malfeasance amongst his colleagues. He clearly enjoys being a mole, but he really didn’t think through the whole process. The screenwriter also wrote the Bourne Ultimatum, but this amount of doublespeak and back-pedaling appears to have done him in. Since the book in paperback is a surprising 656 pages, naturally the film is a lesser-than ad for the book. I was enjoying Mark’s internal monologues much more than the actual “plot,” and wished I could just relax and enjoy that part of the story’s universe. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still diverting, but it’s the kind of movie that stymies my proper critical eye (and ability to write) due to being so jumbled and ambitious, much like its hero. I can’t really blame the screenwriter; director Steven Soderbergh often falls prey to the very intangible thing that bogs down this film: that foggy mushy feeling that I think he uses to make something feel real but instead obscures everyone and makes us sleepy.
The supporting cast is littered with random comedy luminaries (from Seth McFarlane to the Smothers Brothers) who plau their roles with deadly seriousness. Perhaps this lends to the chimaeric feel of the movie, because you have Mr. Action/Drama as a pudgy situational disaster on wheels, and Misters Comedians as hard-nosed heavies and foils. The movie feels uneven and unfinished; it would be easy to blame the adaptation process, with all its necessary slicing and dicing, but even the design of it feels off. Set during the years 1992-1995, the tone is irrepressibly 1970’s. If it weren’t for more modern technologies popping up here and there, I’d never have known it was taking place during the Clinton administration.
My recommendation is to rent the movie, and it may make you, like me, want to check out the book. Save your money for the late fall Oscar releases.
MPAA Rating R-language
Release date 9/18/09
Time in minutes 108
Director Steven Soderbergh
Studio Warner Brothers