Film of the week
The Sunday Age
Sunday December 6, 2009
Rating: 3.5/5THE INFORMANT!(M, 108 minutes). On general releaseThe title of Steven Soderbergh's new film is presented as an exclamation rather than simply a description. This could suggest that what follows is to be a celebration of whistleblower protagonist Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), as in "Yay! What a wonderful informant!" But what gradually becomes clear is that the title is intended ironically, as in "An informant! You've got to be kidding."It's 1992. Whitacre runs the bio-products division at the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), based in Decatur, Illinois. Trained as a biochemist, he's now a respected executive, which is why the other ADM suits listen attentively when he tells them they're the victims of sabotage by a rival Japanese firm.He adds that he has a contact who's told him he can make the problem go away for $10 million, which he proposes would be a quick, clean solution. They're not so sure and, over his protests, summon the FBI. Agents Shepard and Herndon (Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) set out to track down Whitacre's contact and their first move is to tap his phone lines.Uncomfortable with this, he takes Shepard aside and confesses that he and other ADM officials have been involved in global price-fixing. His supportive wife (Melanie Lynskey) has encouraged him to come clean about the company after he tells her that "there are things going on" at ADM that the FBI would be really interested in. Before long, Shepard and Herndon are leading a crusade to expose how "everyone in the country is the victim of corporate crime before they've even finished breakfast". And Whitacre begins wearing a wire to ADM meetings.From all this, it might sound as if The Informant! is yet another thriller about corporate villainy, along the same lines, perhaps, as Michael Mann's The Insider (1999) or Soderbergh's own Erin Brockovich (2000), or Sydney Pollack's John Grisham adaptation, The Firm (1993), which Soderbergh has Whitacre watching admiringly at one point. In fact, though, The Informant! is a comedy, a farce about a business executive who, for years, like a puppeteer pulling the strings, has his colleagues and the FBI dancing to whatever tune he happens upon at the time.Everything that happens is filtered through Whitacre. The scenes that he's not in are ones he's orchestrated. He also serves as the film's very unreliable narrator, his voice-over reflections escalating in their weirdness as he improvises his way from one situation to the next. The comedy isn't so much of the laugh-out-loud kind as the "can you believe this guy?" variety.Believe it or not, though, Soderbergh's film is based on real-life events, which have been described as "the biggest whistleblower case in US history". It was adapted by Scott Burns (co-writer of The Bourne Ultimatum, producer of An Inconvenient Truth) from investigative journalist Kurt Eichenwald's more-or-less straight-faced book of the same name, originally published in 2000, minus that exclamation mark.Marvin Hamlisch's wryly retro score €” more Matt Helm than James Bond €” underlines the way Whitacre sees himself rather than the way we're meant to see him. When he watches Tom Cruise standing up to the bad guys in The Firm, he sees himself. Soderbergh has designed his film to put us inside Whitacre's head at the same time as it's pushing us away from any emotional engagement with him.Damon has worked his boy-next-door persona against type before €” as in the Bourne films and The Talented Mr Ripley €” and the actor does it again beautifully, playing Whitacre as the all-American boy, except not quite. Not only is he a bit of a nerd, but his hair seems to be just a bit too big for his head, he walks as if he's carrying a great weight on his shoulders, and there's something unsettling about his awkwardness. Throw in those voice-overs, and you've got someone who's well and truly cock-eyed. Yet people believe him and, even when we know we shouldn't, we keep wanting to.
© 2009 The Sunday Age
