The Informant! (2009)

Just when it seemed that the whistleblower biopic genre was getting a little too formulaic, in stumbles Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! to turn the same old storyline on its ear.

Plus, how many movies can you name with an exclamation mark in the title? While newspaper editors cringe over the repeated use of that accursed punctuation mark in The Informant! let’s see if we can’t sneak a movie review past them.

Behind a hefty weight gain, a bad hairdo and an awkward mustache, Matt Damon stars as Mark Whitacre, the titular corporate snitch who finks on his agribusiness employees Archer Daniels Midland when he realizes he can’t cover up the vast price fixing in which the company is involved. Unfortunately for the FBI, Whitacre turns out to be even dumber than he looks, calling entirely too much attention to himself and unwittingly concealing key pieces of evidence.

We’ve seen Damon go undercover in Soderbergh’s “Oceans” trilogy, but Mark Whitacre is a far cry from pickpocket Linus Caldwell as far as covert operations go. Nevertheless, Damon slides into character easily, with narration and subtle facial gestures that let us know Whitacre is one of the dullest crayons in the box.

By contrast, the FBI agents in the film are sharp and quick on their feet. Scott Bakula plays senior agent Brian Shepard, slowly simmering with patient frustration at Whitacre’s dim-bulb antics. Joel McHale, recognizable to comedy fans as host of E! Network’s The Soup and star of NBC’s new comedy Community, puts in a fine turn as Agent Bob Herndon, but the film doesn’t give him much to do beyond being exasperated.

The Informant! is unquestionably Damon’s film. His is the open-mouthed mug on all the promotional material for the film, but there’s a great ensemble cast, each of whom get about five minutes to shine, mostly as lawyers. Comedian Patton Oswalt appears as a federal prosecutor, Clancy Brown (the prison guard from The Shawshank Redemption and the voice of SpongeBob’s Mr. Krabs) plays a deep-throated lawyer and Tony Hale (Buster from Arrested Development) shows up as a wide-eyed defense attorney in leagues over his head.

The beefiest supporting role comes from veteran supporting actress Melanie Lynskey, who plays Whitacre’s conflicted wife. If only she were given a little more screen time, this might be a performance to consider for Best Supporting Actress when the Oscars roll around.

That’s another thing about The Informant! Though it’s opening in limited release - a cinematic gimmick I like to call give-us-an-Oscar release - the film doesn’t seem like it’ll be up for any golden statues come early 2010. It’s not that the performances aren’t great: They’re outstanding. But the film doesn’t seem to take itself very seriously at all. Then again, Soderbergh hasn’t taken himself entirely seriously, it seems, since 2000’s Traffic.

The script, though, is solid. Adapted from Kurt Eichenwald’s nonfiction book of the same name, The Informant! is at once hilarious and heart-wrenching, enthusiastically clever and startlingly dramatic. In between side-splitting scenes of bungled espionage, the heart of the film paints a very real portrait of a man suddenly forced to live two lives, a man who isn’t even close to up to the task.

Fortunately, Damon is more than up to the task, and Soderbergh’s not afraid to tell us a story about such profound conflict. We hoot and holler at Whitacre’s mistakes (such as adjusting a concealed tape recorder during a key price fixing meeting), but we’re heart-broken by the time the film ends. You see, we want to see Whitacre become the hero he thinks he is.

But the reality is that sometimes stupid people just do stupid things. It takes a smart film to show us that, to keep us laughing while delivering a message that doesn’t feel forced. After the four-hour commercial flop Che, it’s good to see that Soderbergh is back in form.
The Informant! is rated, mundanely enough, "R for language," warning us of a few F-bombs in store.