Eye Candy #5 - "The Informant!"

The Informant!: The lighter side of corporate whistle blowing. Based on true events, Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) was a corporate VP at ADM in the 1990s who reports to the FBI about price-fixing between ADM and its international competitors to control the market on the food additive lysine. Turning informant, he also starts to turn more than a little delusional and self-sabotaging. He is bipolar, he lies to the FBI, he lies to himself, he lies to his lawyers, creates fake people, companies, and incidents, starts to pattern his activities off the book “The Firm”, falls for one of those Nigerian email scams, fakes his own assault and kidnapping, and embezzles from the same company he is turning state’s evidence against. So he was one of the best and worst informants at the same time and actually ended up doing more prison time for embezzlement than any of the ADM personnel that were convicted of fraud. The movie plays the story for laughs - Whitacre is a goofy sparkplug, full of himself and in love with the gravity of what he was involved in. While he may be book-smart, is short on common sense and his greatest enemy is himself. Regardless of what he says, he’s mostly concerned with how he can profit from the whole affair. Matt Damon is good as Whitacre in a very against type role. Director Steven Soderbergh directs with his usual visual flair and energy. And it’s nice to see Scott Bakula and Joe McHale in fairly sizable roles. And we get the Smothers Brothers, so hey, it’s got that going for it. Would make for an interesting double bill with “The Informer”. Woodchuck sez, “Good without being exceptional.”