Steven Soderbergh’s film “The Informant! “ is not funny ‘ha ha,’ but it is amusing; if you find corporate greed comical.  "The Informant!" is based on the actual events pertaining to the exposure of an international price-fixing conspiracy involving agro-business giant, Archer Daniels Midland.  The end of the film either leaves you bored or disgusted by Matt Damon’s character, Mark Whitacre, who has the audacity to ask for a presidential pardon.

Damon’s performance as a slouchy, egocentric, pathological liar is deftly charming. Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns puts the audience in Whitacre’s head, and the use of voice over enables the audience to enter the disjointed thought process of Whitacre’s chaotic way of thinking, which is both confusing and entertaining, at times. 

Mark Whitacre is known as the highest-ranking corporate whistle-blower ever.  He earned over $300.000 a year, yet he decided to strap an FBI tapped wire to his chest for over two years in order to expose his employer’s price fixing scheme.   The audience is made to believe that Whitacre's desire to put his home, career and family on the line is due to his high moral standards and his objective to do the right thing, but what was his real motive?

“The Informant! “ is not Soderbergh’s best.  Yes, it is clever and Damon carries the show in a way that shocks the audience again and again, but the slow pace and bad back lighting makes the hour and 48 minutes hard to sit through.  Sticking around until the very end was only due to the anticipation of learning how the story panned out - in which the audience is left with the hard truth that people like Whitacre actually exist and that corporate price fixing probably happens more often than we think.  

by kiley lane