Steven Soderbergh's "The Informant!" is perhaps one of the funniest and smartest films I've seen all year. However the film is interestingly not a comedy nor is it about a particularly smart man, although that's very arguable. Matt Damon delivers one of his finest most flawless performances as Mark Whitacre, the V.P. for a company that specializes in corn production and distribution. Through several of the opening scenes Mark is having dinner with his family and is discussing all the products that corn is apart of. There is thousands of items, so much so that you probably don't go a day without consuming corn in some form. Thus when you think about it one who works for a place that has corn then you realize that said place would be, to quote Craig Robertson 'Oprah Rich'.
Mark Whitacre and the other upper members of the company are indeed rich and they love it. Things get hairy though when a mysterious virus keeps getting into the corn and messing it. Add to that a phone call from a member of a rival Asian corn company that claims they have a bug that can destroy the virus, but they must be willing to pay. In the corporate world extortion is itself a business. The first thought is negotiate. After all if what he says is true then having this bug might be worth some money, but perhaps not what they're asking for. However the owners somewhat change their tune later and bring in the FBI to simply wire tap Whitacre's business line of his house since he will be directly. Agent Shepard played wonderfully by Scott Bakula is a fairly mild mannered guy just doing his rather routine work, that is until Whitacre strangely decides to inform him of his company working with others companies to fix prices across the market which is highly illegal.
Bombshell as it may be you must ask why. Why would someone who is a company vice president, getting paid great amounts of money with a family decide to turn government informant? Let's just say throughout the entire film Whitacre will give you several reasons, but you'll learn even more than that.
Often I forget just how mesmerizing a filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is. He was a guy I discovered yes around the time of "Ocean's Eleven", but then I went back and watched tons and tons of his work. The vast majority was at in the least entertaining (sans a could including "Full Frontal" and the less then impressive crime thriller "The Limey") and at it's highest he had some of the most engrossing, detailed and amazing looking films I had ever seen. His 2000 film "Traffic" (for which he won Best Director for) still stands as one of the greatest dramas I've ever seen. Plus he's diverse and never afraid to try out a new genre or use unknown talent (as he did earlier this year by making porn star Sasha Grey the lead in "The Girlfriend Experience"). With "The Informant!" he's made a dry, dry drama, thriller, comedy that's among his very best films. The photography is beautiful and the upbeat and whimsical score by legendary composer Marvin Hamlisch is brilliant.
Beyond that this is simply an amazing story that made more amazing by it's telling. In a sense it's like a comedic mystery that's made fun not from what people say, but from what things mean and often what they do and don't say. It's intelligently told and the screenplay by Scott Burns unravels perfectly. "The Informant!" is brilliant, but probably not for everyone. Not everybody will probably find it funny and fun to tap into this bizarre story and it's unbelievably bizarre finale. But "The Informant!" is just that kind of film... that's also a ridiculous true story. And really something this crazy couldn't be made up.
"The Informant!" **** out of ****
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