the Informer

Steven Soderbergh's "The Informant!" is a movie that, when taken at first glance, can only be assumedly fiction. The film details the rise and fall of a bipolar executive who spearheaded a whistle blowing campaign against his own company for the FBI, and was then discovered to be guilty of fraud and tax evasion, by the same people he worked with.

What seemed like a straightforward, historically based whodunit, was actually a story that managed to take the viewer's ever changing expectations, pick them up, rattle them around and chuck them right back. Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, the VP of Archer Daniel's Midland, a company that sells products like high fructose corn syrup on the market. Whitacre, suffering from bipolar disorder, eventually is convinced by his wife to cooperate in an FBI investigation, trying to discover if another company has been tampering with ADM's product. His cooperation with Special Agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) leads Whitacre to grudgingly admit to a number of his own illegal practices within the company, and soon the highest corporate position-holding whistleblower in the history of the U.S. was installed at ADM.

Eventually, however, we begin to see that all of the things Whitacre has been spouting are not necessarily true. While he did in fact point the FBI in the right direction toward illegal practices within his company, he also set them on the trail to some of his own tragic mistakes. Soon enough, Whitacre is spending all of his time trying to piece his old lies together and spin new ones, until it all leads to his tragic fall.

While the casting was well done, Soderbergh does a great job with subtle plot points as well. Where one thing is happening, and we see a conversation going along that Whitacre might lose interest in, the voiceovers start. At first they seemed to just be a way to lighten up the story, a slightly different train of thought to let the movie keep up its pace and not inundate the audience with information. As the movie draws to a close, though, we start to realize that the voiceovers aren't just there to amuse us – they portray Whitacre as a man who is on the edge of losing his sanity. We learn that much of what he has said about his own involvement and specific dealings in general are lies. The voiceovers are part of his bipolar disorder, and when he is asked a question we learn that the voice comes up with the lie, and he repeats it. This interaction between the narration and the character's own head is great, and it is one of those things that makes you want to re-watch the movie and see if there was any foreshadowing or anything in the voiceovers you might have missed.

While it is clear that not everything happened the way things were in the movie, there is no arguing the fact that this is based off of a true story. One man, earning more money in a year than most will ever assumedly see in their life, decided to end his piece of the pie and go down in flames because of a disorder he had. While that is an extremely bare bones account of the plot, it makes you wonder if this movie was the correct direction. Sure, it was funny, but in all honesty I think it would have made more sense to go with it in a more serious direction. The end of the movie did that well, with the first honest sign of sentimentality between husband and wife being shown at the same moment that everyone, including the viewing audience, realizes that Whitacre has some real problems. I feel like this movie really skipped over the potential meat of the story and went instead for the quick one two punch of "oh, this movie is kind of funny" to "oh wow the whole time we were laughing at a guy with some real issues." Sure, it has impact for a minute or so, but I think that this story had the potential for a lot more.

The film itself is based off of a true story, and while some of the specifics in the movie are assuredly different, there is no denying that this interesting situation did actually happen.

I did enjoy the movie, there was no raucous bounce off the walls humor to it, but I definitely laughed. I would have liked more completion to the plot and a little less witty writing, but I was still entertained. Overall I would give this movie a 7/10.