Movie review: 'The Informant!'

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Steven Soderbergh is a man of diverse tastes and talents. He’s done everything from mainstream heist movies (the Ocean’s 11 franchise) to arthouse experimentation (Bubble) to epic biopics (Che parts one and two). Soderbergh has earned a lot of respect in the film world and rightly so. But even he couldn’t make The Informant! (out now in theaters) a truly entertaining movie.

The movie, based on the book by Kurt Eichenwald, tells the true story of corporate climber Mark Whitacre (a chubby Matt Damon). He’s a pathological liar and his lying eventually leads to his sort of (but not completely) inventing a price-fixing scam involving his company, ADM, for which he plays informant to two FBI agents (Scott Bakula and Joel McHale).

Whitacre’s story is certainly an interesting one, full of corporate greed and intrigue. It tells well (for a more condensed, fast-paced version of the story, check out This American Life’s episode on Whitacre, “The Fix is In”). But, unfortunately, it just doesn’t film well. The art direction and cinematography are great but, even with the addition of Marvin Hamlisch’s goofy score, it just isn’t enough to make up for characters who just aren’t that interesting.

The Informant! isn’t a bad movie. Its heart is in the right place, and the story it tells (at least conceptually) is intriguing. But one can’t help but think it might have worked out better as a documentary, or some looser form of narrative that required less dramatic creativity. As it is, much of the movie just ends up being kind of flat.

Rating: Two stars

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