FLIX/The Informant is Well Worth the Aggravation

Photo by Claudette Barius Matt Damon, who gained 30 pounds for the role, also narrates the movie. Unfortunately, not as Will Hunting.

Matt Damon, who gained 30 pounds for his role as Mark Whitacre in The Informant!, also narrates the movie, which is rated R and open nationwide on Sept. 18.
 
Unfortunately, not as Will Hunting.  He never says anything like, “I became an informant for the FBI because I wanted to mess up some smart kids” or mentioned how when his bosses found out they were going to jail he said “how do you like them apples?”

This is the first true comedy that Matt Damon has starred in since Stuck on You.  Apparently it took Hollywood six years to trust him in a comedic role again.  Having seen Stuck on You, I’d say only waiting six years is the same as being paroled early on a twenty-year sentence.  The punishment should fit the crime and Stuck on You was grand theft on those who paid to see it.

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures The Informant’s cast is comprised of several current and former television stars.

The movie is directed by Steven Soderbergh, who also directed Damon in Ocean’s 11.  It’s a good thing Brett Ratner didn’t direct The Informant! or the audience would have been subjected to another movie starring Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan.

The movie's cast is comprised of several current and former television stars.  Or at least people who were at one time on popular TV shows.  
 
Scott Bakula plays FBI agent Brian Shepard.  Bakula was the star of Quantum Leap, which saw its last show air in 1993.  Evidently he could have made one of his trademark leaps that year and ended up in The Informant.  Melanie Lynskey plays Ginger Whitacre, wife of Mark.  
 
It’s hard to see Ms. Lynskey and not think of her character Rose from Two and a Half Men.  The entire film I was waiting for her to sneak out of the house and wind up at Charlie Harper’s Malibu beach house.  
 
Joel McHale, the outstanding host of the E! Network’s weekly reality show wrap-up, The Soup, plays FBI agent Bob Herndon.  Sadly, there was no clip of the week during the film.  The point of listing these supporting actors of The Informant! is to try to poke holes in the theory that television stars can’t be in successful films.  It can be called the “Shelley Long and David Caruso Don’t Speak For Everyone” rule.

The Informant! tells the true story of bio-chemist Mark Whitacre, a top-level executive at Archer Daniels Midland, who turns whistleblower on his own company for unethical price-fixing practices in the food industry.  
 

Photo by Claudette Barius The Informant tells the true story of bio-chemist Mark Whitacre, a top-level executive at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), who turns whistleblower on his own company for unethical price-fixing practices in the food industry.

A moral employee of a dishonorable corporation who takes a stand against greed would make for a nice story, but there’s more to Mark Whitacre than altruism.  Eventually his other persona is revealed.  If it weren’t, we as the audience would be left in the dark, or uniformed, making the title of the film a bit ironic.

Other famous whistleblowers include the Deep Throat of Watergate fame, the tobacco industry’s Jeffrey Wigand (whom the film The Insider is based on), Sherron Watkins of Enron, and Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.

The soundtrack for The Informant!  includes several scores by Marvin Hamlisch, but it doesn’t include Informer by Canadian rapper Snow.  While the song’s subject is appropriate for the movie, keeping those lyrics out of the public’s mind since 1993 is probably in everyone’s best interest.  
 
A licky boom boom down.  

The film is billed as a dark comedy.  That is a pretty accurate description.  
 
Damon’s Whitacre is an academically intelligent person, but the cast of The Hills might have more common sense.  Several times during the movie Whitacre displays behavioral traits that would make any FBI agent squirm if they had to rely on him for covert espionage.  
 
He constantly draws attention to hidden cameras and at one point opens his briefcase to fix a tape recorder that is jammed.  If the FBI ever wanted to infiltrate Dunder Mifflin, using Michael Scott as their informant would be identical to what happened with Mark Whitacre.  It’s a miracle he didn’t start his own paper company halfway through the movie.

Eventually this attitude and personality flaw catches up to Whitacre and a hidden double life emerges.  He has successes in his role with the FBI, but ends up in more trouble than those he spent years trying to expose.

The Informant! was an entertaining movie with a lot of laughs and plenty of frustration aimed at Mark Whitacre.  For someone so intelligent, the audience often asks itself, “He can’t be this dumb, can he?”  
 
It turns out he can.  

But so can you for not going to see it.    

To contact the writer, email him at stevedettorre@yahoo.com