Friday
18Sep2009
Movie Review - 'The Informant!'
Friday, September 18, 2009 at 1:44AM | The Informant!
Starring Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, and Melanie Lynskey  |
Mark Whitacre had a selective guilty conscience. The biotech executive a Archer Daniels Midland, then one of the biggest food additive companies in the world, couldn't let his company and its competition around the world continue gouging the unsuspecting consumer with their unfettered price fixing. The solution was to tape conversations for and work directly with the FBI in order to catch ADM red-handed.
Of course, Whitacre didn't feel nearly as guilty about some criminal activities in which he engaged on the side.
In The Informant!, director Steven Soderbergh recounts a story so strange it has to be true. And, well, it is. But Soderbergh's stylistic approach adds some artifice. For example, probably 50% of the speaking parts go to recognizable comedians, though not one of them ever says anything that's supposed to be funny. And while the events take place in the early- to mid-1990s, the look of The Informant! is more reminiscent of the Carter administration, right down to the film's original score by Marvin Hamlisch (The Sting, Ice Castles).
The effect works, however, through and through. And in part because of those decisions, it's somewhat surprising that this is one of Soderbergh's most consistent films, never dragging, never veering off into some direction it shouldn't be going.
When Whitacre (Matt Damon) learned that ADM was engaged in price fixing, he told the FBI - embodied most often by Scott Bakula - exactly what he know. His company, which in 2008 reported gross profits of an astonishing $70 billion, would establish higher rates for lycene than the reasonable market price, or would agree to higher prices in conjunction with companies in Japan and Europe.
So what? Who cares is the cost of a corn by-product skyrockets? Well, lysine is found in a ton of foods, from beans to corn to meat to fish to eggs. So that means almost everything else will go up in price, directly affecting consumers.
Reader Comments (1)
Good review Colin, well done...
I enjoyed it I thought the acting was better than the directing but thats just me...
I also however thought it was slow at times and took its time to develop and the comedy as in laughs weren't as many as the trailer made it out to be....
Matt Damon pulled it off, great turn for his career...