Man, talk about disappointed! Granted it was my own fault because I went in expecting to see my new favorite movie. The Informant was incredibly disappointing to me. That's not to say that it doesn't have it moments, and that artistically it's not an incredibly well done movie, it just means that it really, as a whole, isn't that good. Matt Damon does a really good job, and he definitely has some really funny lines, but the trailer had all the funny lines in it, and even made some line that weren't funny in the movie seem funny.
The Informant is based on a true story that is kind of a mixture of A Beautiful Mind and The Insider but, not nearly as good as either one. The Informant is the tale of Mark Whitacre (played by Matt Damon), an Ivy League Ph.D. who was a rising star at Archer Daniels Midland in the early 1990s. Damon's character becomes whistle blower on the company's price fixing tactics and became the highest-ranked executive to ever turn whistle blower in US history. He secretly gathers hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes over several years to present to the FBI which became one of the largest price fixing cases in history. In this a dark comedy, Whitacre's good deed begins to dovetail when his own major infractions come to light and we learn that our quirky hero is actually struggling with severe bipolar disorder.
This movie is cleverly told from the point of view of Whitacre, but since our hero has bipolar disorder, we never really know whether what he is telling us is the truth or not. Basically, you spend the whole movie wondering whether Whitacre is lying or telling the truth, and what his motivations are for either. This starts to get very tedious. Normally, when the audience is purposefully mislead by our narrator, it is to get to a big, shocking reveal which doesn't really happen here. We just kind of find out that our guy is kind of a liar.
Matt Damon, for my money, did a great job in this role. His performance is really what makes the movie watchable and a times unwatchable (which is kind of the point). He gained a lot of weight for this role so his normally thin frame is nice and frumpy. He also rocks a great '90s stache for most of the movie. When the movie starts out, Damon's Whitacre is a very friendly, likable albeit nerdy guy. By the end, you kind of want to punch his damn lights out. But once again, that's the point.
What can I say other that this one certainly didn't live up to it's hype. Director Steven Soderbergh has made some really good movies (See Ocean's movies). And he's certainly a good technical filmmaker, but this one just fell flat. I'm not saying this movie was terrible, I'm just saying it wasn't very attention holding. I've discovered that I have a pretty easy gauge on which to judge as to whether I am bored with a movie or whether it's just not all that exciting (and believe me, there's a difference). When I find myself playing online Scrabble or beginning a crossword puzzle while watching a movie...I'm bored. I believe I did both during this one. The only people I would feel okay about recommending this movie to are Matt Damon fanatics or people with bipolar disorder. I'm just saying.
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