1/2

This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

The Informant!, an offbeat comedy from director Steven Soderbergh and based on a true story and book of the same name by Kurt Eichenwald, is some of the most fun I’ve had at the theater all year. It’s true that Soderbergh has been down this road before with Erin Brockovich, but whereas that film, reminiscent of other corporate litigation thrillers like A Civil Action and The Insider, tackled the issue seriously, this time around he tries the cheeky approach. The Informant! couldn’t be more timely or more politically germane. Along with the aforementioned films, The Informant! is part of an ever-growing subgenre of American films that set their sites on corporate America and the corrupted capitalism that all too often drives it.

Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland, who suddenly turns whistleblower, exposing his organization’s participation in a multinational price-fixing conspiracy. Why? That’s a question FBI Special Agents Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) and Bob Herndon (Joel McHale) are asking even as they thank their lucky stars that such an incredible case dropped in their laps. Convinced he’ll be hailed as a hero, Whitacre thinks that if he wipes the executive boardroom clean, a lucrative promotion will be his.

But when the investigation unwittingly reveals Whitacre’s proclivity for dipping into the corporate coffers, a massive web of lies comes suddenly into focus, threatening to derail the entire investigation. Unable to get to the bottom of their informant’s ever-shifting account, the FBI can do nothing but look on in horror as the highest-ranking corporate takedown in U.S. history collapses like a house of cards.

Fresh from The Girlfriend Experience, a beautiful but deeply flawed artsy film of the kind the director seems to make in between each of his more mainstream releases, Soderbergh’s approach is decidedly quirky and ironic, balancing between outright satire and outrageous farce. He gets away with it because every other part of the film rises to the occasion, particularly the script, the fine cast and a scintillating score.

The script, by screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum), sizzles and is a sure bet for Academy Award consideration. One of the most enjoyable things about The Informant! is Whitacre’s wonderful, rambling, stream of consciousness, inner monologue. This utterly unreliable narration reveals more than an active imagination; it reveals a head full of useless knowledge, deluded narcissism and a predilection for pathological self-deception.

If Whitacre is an onion with layers and layers to get through before discovering the true self at the center, he is an onion the size of a cantaloupe. And The Informant! is like a möbius strip, unendingly curling back on itself. We, like the FBI, never know if we’re getting the truth from Whitacre or not, which causes us to watch with greater attention than we might otherwise employ.

Part of the fun of The Informant! is how completely Soderbergh plays his star against type. Matt Damon is never unrecognizable even with his extra 30 pounds, a mustache and glasses, but the way he shuffles about, a sort of deluded Willy Loman, will inevitably short-circuit brains used to seeing the star smash about in the Bourne films. Damon is pure charisma here, an absolute delight to watch.

The supporting cast is no less enjoyable. Soderbergh fills the coffers with comic actors from Joel McHale to the Smothers Brothers and then ratchets their usual excessive tendencies down, giving us characters who seem on the verge of breaking into ridiculousness at any moment but never do.

Although the film takes place in the early 90s, Soderbergh and composer Marvin Hamlisch (The Sting) score it as if it were a product of the 1970s. Hamlisch’s music is playful yet hip, a cacophony of horns and assorted instruments that jest even in the most serious of scenes.

It is a testament to both Soderbergh’s direction and Damon’s acting chops that an otherwise dry and serious story should come out on the other side as one of the funnier films of the year.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.