Warner Bros. | 2009 | 108 mins. | Rated R
The main character in The Informant! is a fairly high ranking corporate executive who goes undercover to spy on his company for the FBI. At one point, he remarks he feels like he’s living two lives—that he’s been split into two people. As I was watching this film, I found myself coming back to that line repeatedly. Not so much because of the film itself, but because of its director Stephen Soderbergh. A very successful auteur, one could argue he has two very distinct directing careers. The same man who struck box office gold with the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, is also a committed indie guy who has brought us daring projects like Che and The Girlfriend Experience.
Perhaps Soderbergh was attracted to this film because it allowed him to combine both kinds of filmmaking. Yes, The Informant! Is the story of a corporate whistle-blower, but those expecting this to be a full blown parody of films such as The Insider may be disappointed; while the film has it’s playful moments, there’s an unmistakably dramatic element throughout.
The story, based on Kurt Eichenwald’s book of the same name, recounts the misadventures of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a division president with the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) Corporation who became directly responsible for one the biggest antitrust cases the FBI ever prosecuted. When we are first introduced to Whitacre, he seems to be a highly ethical individual. Early on in a power point presentation, he’s chewed out by his superiors for the company’s recent losses. He’s told bluntly to ‘fix it.’ Mark seems to take this as an ultimatum and starts digging into the company’s business practices discovering some illegal price fixing activities with their Japanese partners.
Shortly thereafter, Mark starts spilling his guts to FBI agents Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) and Robert Herndon (Joel McHale) in 1992. Over the course of their subsequent three-year investigation, Whitacre excitedly sports countless wires, arranges elaborate meetings designed to ensnare his coworkers, and amasses more than two-hundred damning recordings that prove his bigwig ADM colleagues are involved in an international price-fixing scam with some of the company’s biggest competitors. As the case moves on, and the agents move toward what the feel is a surefire conviction, Whitacre starts to exhibit some strange and troubling behavior. What the audience may have suspected soon becomes clear: Whitacre is a compulsive liar; weaving a web of lies to stay one step ahead of his own inevitable demise. He’s been playing us as readily as the FBI agents and ADM employees on his strings. To what end we never completely know, but somehow that seems appropriate.
While Soderbergh maintains some humor, the rest of The Informant! is rather sad. Having lost control of the situation, Whitacre becomes increasingly erratic and unhinged. In an effort to regain the trust of his wife (Melanie Lynskey), his FBI allies, the public, and his lawyers, he weaves story after story—one more unbelievable than the last. We learn he’s a manic depressive. While this all makes sense, we are forced to wonder: is the disease yet another protective shield, devised to protect him from the harsh glare of the FBI investigation into the millions of dollars he’d amassed in offshore accounts? Perhaps we’ll never know.
The Informant! Is one of the more thought provoking films of the year and Matt Damon’s performance is one of the most underrated. Not an obvious choice, Damon is the perfect mix of nerd, do-gooder and liar; full of it, but totally confident in his own sense of right and wrong, which is more or less inexorably tied to his own sense of self-preservation. It’s an unfailingly funny performance, but you can’t catch Damon trying to be funny, and the deeper he gets, the more fun he is to watch.
The 1080p transfer nicely replicates the aged look of Soderbergh’s cinematography. He’s not adverse to playing with light levels, occasionally blowing out the frame with a hot white back or above light, but the 1.85:1 image suffers from no instability or ringing, and the experiments with color saturation are mostly successful (though a couple of scenes, like the post-raid conversation in the parking lot, are a little too amber-flavored). Black levels are deep and full, while detail work is solid. It’s not exactly a luminous, richly colorful image, but that’s entirely by design—on Blu-ray, The Informant! looks exactly as it did in theaters.
The lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 has little to do. With the exception of Marvin Hamlisch’s background score, the soundtrack is composed almost entirely of dialogue, so don’t expect much in the way of sonic fireworks or surround activity. However, the dialogue does sound remarkably clear and lifelike, without any sign of brightness or harshness.
French, Spanish, and Portuguese Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes are also included, as are English SDH, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles.
The Informant! doesn’t offer much in the way of special features:
• Audio Commentary with director Steven Soderbergh and writer Scott Burns: The pair share a breezy, affable chat about Kurt Eichenwald’s original book, the development of Burns’ adaptation, Soderbergh’s attraction to the material, the reasons he decided to inject comedy into the story, and the subsequent film’s casting, and production.
• Deleted Scenes (6:25 w/”Play All”) is a collection of four scenes trimmed from the film. They are presented in 1.85:1 VC1 1080p video with DD 2.0 sound, but may actually be up-converted from SD based on how they appear. All four are good scenes that were cut for running time considerations. More context on three of them is provided in the audio commentary of the film where Soderbergh mentions where they would have been used and why they were cut.
• SD DVD & Digital Copy – As is the case with all recent Warner BDs of theatrical new release titles, a separate disc is included with an SD DVD of the film and a digital copy. The DVD presentation is a bare bones presentation with the film in 16:9 enhanced widescreen video, English Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 sound, and available English SDH, French, or Spanish subtitles. It has no extras.
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