Product Description

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 02/23/2010 Run time: 108 minutes Rating: R

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22559 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2010-02-23
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 108 minutes

Amazon.com
Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!--like the director's one-two Oscar® punch, Erin Brockovich and Traffic--is an energetic exposé of corporate/criminal chicanery with wide-ranging implications for life in these United States. Not so much like those movies, it plays as hyper-caffeinated comedy. At its center is Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a biochemist and junior executive at agri-giant Archer Daniels Midland who, in 1992, began feeding the FBI evidence of ADM's involvement in price fixing. Mark's motive for doing so is elusive, sometimes self-contradictory, and subject to mutation at any moment. To describe him as bipolar would be akin to finding the Marx Brothers somewhat zany. His Fed handlers, along with the audience, start thinking of him as a hapless goofball. Then they and we get blind-sided with the revelation of further dimensions of Mark's life at ADM, and the nature of the investigation--and the movie--changes. That will happen again. And again. It's Soderbergh's ingenious strategy to make us fellow travelers on Mark's crazy ride, virtually infecting us with a short-term version of his dysfunctionality.

Props to screenwriter Scott Z. Burns for boiling down Kurt Eichenwald's 600-page book The Informant: A True Story without sacrificing coherence. And Matt Damon, bulked up by 30 pounds and spluttering his manic lines from under a caterpillar mustache, reconfirms his virtuosity and his willingness to dive deep into such a dodgy personality. On the downside, despite a small army of comedians in cameo roles, The Informant! has nothing like the rich field of subsidiary characters encountered in Erin Brockovich and Traffic. That lack of vibrancy is aggravated by the dominance of prairie-flat Midwest speech patterns and cadences (most of the film unreels in Illinois), and the razzmatazz score by veteran tunesmith Marvin Hamlisch sounds like pep-rally music on an industrial film. Soderbergh also photographed the movie (under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), and his decision to show everything through a corn-mush filter turns it into a big-screen YouTube experience. --Richard T. Jameson

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Customer Reviews

Beautiful Mind + Insider + Duck Soup = Informant!...So there!
In 1992 Mark Whitacre, the President of Bio-Product division of ADM (powerful Fortune 500 company), became the highest ranking executive EVER to turn whistle blower. For three years he helped the FBI gather evidence of a multinational conspiracy to control the price of lysine. As a result, US government collected hundreds of millions of dollars in fines from ADM and foreign corporations, followed by prison sentences for three executives. These are events in real life as well as the movie. However, according to the opening credits, the film is not intended as a documentary and does depart from real life facts... The final, cheeky line of the prologue: "So there!", gives us a hint that, though the topic and the consequences suffered by many in this story are somber, what we are about to see is meant to amuse and entertain, as well as educate...

As promised, the chuckles do come often, but their source is not your typical one liners. Matt Damon is Whitacre, an inspired choice for the role. His plump, mustachioed and toupeed character comes across so harmless and ordinary you never question why his actions go undetected; even as his concealed recording equipment loudly malfunctions during a covert multinational executive meeting! You laugh at the bewilderment of FBI agents and the DA's office as they are led by the nose by Whitacre's increasingly outlandish antics. One could say "The Informant!" has the educational quality of an Aesop's fable: blinded by their desire to swallow a tasty morsel (ADM), the agents cross their fingers and fail to run even the most basic checks on their informant; checks that would immediately reveal inconsistencies in his stories (such as the true nature of his parentage, for example).

The film is not perfect. Based on the way it was being advertised, I expected something in the same category as "The Pink Panther". In reality, one would not be wrong to describe it as a combination of "A Beautiful Mind", "The Insider", and "The Duck Soup" (Marx Brothers). Sadly, "The Informant!" never quite becomes as touching, thrilling and funny as those films were, respectively. The makers allow it to drag on a bit in the second half as Whitacre's behaviour becomes absurd. The logical explanation for it all arrives only after our initial keen interest has already begun to dissipate. I also hear some grumblings about the film's muted lighting. Since most of the action takes place in offices and hotels, I believe the lighting is true to reality. Anyone who has spent at least one work day in a cubicle, understands how oppressive that atmosphere can be. Despite these possible faults, Whitacre's story and Damon's performance make "The Informant!" worthy of at least one theater trip. Depending on your personal approach, you will see a funny thriller or... a thrilling comedy. Either way, expect to be entertained!

PS: BRAVO! to the filmmakers for sticking to a relatively modest budget ($21 mil)! I am sick of paying to see worthless films with budgets that could bankrupt the economy of a small country.

A merry-go-round instead of a roller-coaster
Intro: This is a review of the movie as an experience. Look elsewhere if you want an overview of the story, or how well the movie reflects actual events and people.

For those who would be satisfied with a movie that was simply a collection of goofy and absurdist scenes, I expect that the pacing here is much to slow to be satisfying, although in the second half it becomes noticeably less slow.

For those expecting more, the basic problem here is with how the lead character Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) is portrayed. It is immediately reminiscent of the William H Macy character in Fargo: A doofus in over his head who is flailing about. However, in Fargo there was a progression to that state--here it starts at that point and doesn't change much.

Even without the Fargo baggage, the Whitacre character is too big a goof to be sympathetic or funny. My first impression was that he was an incompetent bottom level manager. When he was identified as a top manager, I couldn't help but think of him as a fraud, thereby undermining everything that was to come. In addition to his being a fraud within the movie, it was a fraud on the audience: Such a personality would never have gotten a PhD (from Cornell), much less risen so high in a major corporation (most people forced to work with such a person would be screaming and throwing things at him before the end of the first day).

The core of the movie's story is the revelation of a series of deceptions and lies. The typical dramatic treatment, whether serious or humorous, is akin to a roller-coaster: It elevates your confidence that you know what is happening, then suddenly puts you into free fall, adding twists and turns to increase your disorientation. You start to climb out of that, only to be hit by additional drops. This movie has no such drama: It just goes gently and slowly round and round, the tone being closer to enumerating the lies than to revealing them. Perhaps Whitacre was intended to be played by an improvisational comic who was expected to fill in such texture?

As a movie, the significant story elements should have been _seen_ and not merely commented on by characters. For example, Whitacre is presented as being maniac-depressive (bipolar), but we never _see_ that roller-coaster of emotions--the portrayal is very flat. At the very end, statements of various characters provide some evidence of this (Nigerian scam, compulsive over-consumption). Additionally, when part of the story is whether his underlying mental problems were triggered or exacerbated by his role as an informant, how could they not show this, but simply comment on it at the end?

The script has characters _saying_ that Whitacre is brilliant, but I remember only a couple of scenes where he _appeared_ even mildly clever.

We are _told_ that even after all the revelations of Whitacre's crimes and lying that some of the Feds (FBI and prosecutors) strongly advocated clemency for him, but from the movie, I couldn't guess why. And during the extended investigation, there is no sense of the passage of time--other than dates being flashed on the screen. Nor do we _see_ the stresses on Whitacre: The script trivializes his risks and sacrifices by consigning them to asides in the disconnected goofy scenes that constitute this movie.

This movie seems to have been intended to be both funny and interesting, but is neither.

IT SURE ISN'T SCHIZOPOLIS
Director Soderbergh's brilliant SchizopolisSchizopolis - Criterion Collection had my expectations raised too high for this, I thought, spiritless parody of American business. This sad, flat piece of fluff droned for its entire length, was overly convoluted, filled with irrelevant digressions and meaningless information. Hum-drummery at its most vapid worst

Humor was dry drone, not droll, cynical and confusing. Confusing as to why SS didn't use anything but a drumming, metronome delivery, with everyone mumbling their way along in occasionally a quasi-documentary style. In other scenes, not much style at all. A grave disappointment. I guess OCEAN'S 11,12,13 just sucked the talent from Soderbergh. Hope he makes a come back, there was talent there, before.