THE INFORMANT -- An Odd Bird of a Movie

THE INFORMANT is an odd mishmash of a movie. It tells the true story of Mark Whitacre, an employee of Archer Daniels Midland who turns into a whistleblower about price fixing in the corn business.

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Only that's not the whole story. Because Mark is a pathological liar. And a forger and embezzler, who stole millions from ADM while he was working to expose their wrongdoing. Matt Damon is great in the film, and there's a fine supporting cast including Scott Bakula and Joel McHale(!). The whole thing is ably directed by Steven Soderbergh. And the script by Scott Burns mostly achieves what it sets out to.

There are some intersting writerly choices, including having an almost omnipresent VO narration by Whitacre, chronicling a series of minutiae. This helps with the comic tone of the film, and sets the expectation that something's not entirely kosher with this guy. Unfortunately, because you're identifying with Whitacre, once it's clear that he's done something very wrong, there's no one to really carry the story forward. You're left coasting along to see how the whole thing pans out.

The FBI agents are really minor characters, so they don't carry the film. And you don't quite understand why Mark did the things he did since his explanations and reasoning constantly shift as he's caught in more and more lies.

The film also isn't quite clear about what exactly the whole price fixing situation is and why that's a crime per se. Why should it matter that we pay $.05 more for a box of cornflakes in six months? On a rational level, I understand that that's anti-competitive and could add up to millions in profit to ADM and its competitors. But does that make much of a difference in even the poorest person's life?

The film was co-produced by Participant, a label known for their socially conscious films. I guess that's to bring to light price fixing by big agribusiness concerns. Except that that's not really what this movie's about. The price fixing is really just an adjunct to the story of a man with some severe mental problems who ruins his life exposing some wrongdoing that in turn exposes all of the stuff he's done wrong.

In the end, although the film's enjoyable, it's really more of an exercise by Soderbergh in exploring a different kind of protagonist and a different kind of film. And in that way, it's more like BUBBLE or KAFKA or THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE than OCEAN'S 11 or OUT OF SIGHT.