Review: ‘The Informant’

Steven Soderbergh shot 2 movies last year, one about a whistle blower executive and the other about a high priced call girl. Both movies were released this year and with them it definitely marks the return of Soderbergh.

Normally you wouldnt assume that a film based on the inner workings of a global price fixing scheme would garner laughs, or even keep a sane person interested enough to make it through the whole thing. However thanks to the stellar acting of Matt Damon and the comic sensibilities that the script lends you cant help but wonder whats going to happen next.

Matt Damon stars as Mark Whitacre, an executive at Archer Daniels Midland, who attempts to take money from the company and it backfires when they call in the FBI to handle the extortion. When the FBI gets involved Marks wife makes him fess up about a global price fixing ADM is responsible for and they launch a full scale investigation. Mark gets involved and is responsible for helping bring the company down. In the process Mark gets into a little more than he bargained for.

What is great about this movie is they could have gone a few directions with it, and instead of boring you with mundane details that would be important, they use inner dialogue for Mark Whitacre. For example: They are in an important meeting dealing with millions of dollars, and their conversations fade out and it fades in with Mark thinking about completely random, off the wall bi-polar thoughts. After the first couple of times you get more and more intrigued and start to look forward to the next one.

All of the acting is stellar here, especially Matt Damon and Scott Bakula(who plays one of the FBI detectives that worked with Mark Whitacre). The cinematography is at its best here and you can tell that Soderbergh has definitely honed his craft.