The Informant was not just any movie-going experience for me. When I showed up to the free screening I found online this past Tuesday, I met the unexpected sight of a red carpet. Turns out I was at the New York premiere, and I soon found myself sharing a theater with the likes of Matt Damon, Joel McHale, and Steven Soderbergh. Not that I got a good look at any of them. I came in the back entrance and sat in the front with the commoners. Still, pretty cool.
As for the movie itself, it was a lot of fun. Based on a true story (but adjusted heavily enough to turn the serious truth into a comedy), The Informant finds Matt Damon playing Mark Whitacre, family man and top exec in one of those big pharmabiological type companies that make a ton of money even though you and I have no idea what it is they actually do. When the FBI is brought in over another matter, Whitacre gets the chance to play the crusader as he volunteers information on a massive price-fixing scheme.
Sure, the FBI agents (played by Scott Bakula and The Soup's Joel McHale) question why a guy making six figures who isn't wanted for any other crime would turn informant, but soon enough that's exactly what he becomes. Wearing a wire for years, he gets the FBI their case. But once they start looking a little closer at their informant, they realize he may not be all he says.
With all of that though, the movie succeeds most as a character piece. Matt Damon, not needing the extra weight to make you forget the Jason Bournes and Will Huntings he's played in the past, takes a character who at first seems a joke into something far more interesting. Early on, we're given snippets of his nonsensical, word association inner monologue, simplying nothing is going on upstairs. And if you've seen the trailers, making him out to be some sort of bumbling fool who does all but should out "I'm an informant," you'd think the same thing.
The movie works though because that's not at all the case. Damon's Whitacre is actually a highly intelligent man. He's got a PHD, speaks multiple languages, and as far as we can tell executes his job well. Furthermore, he actually makes a decent spy. He never for a second breaks character in front of his bosses, and even improvises when the FBI's gadgets don't work. So it makes all the less sense when he narrates to his wire where people can hear him or pulls out a recorder in the middle of a meeting. This question of how someone can be so smart and so dumb at the same time creates most of the comedy in the movie's first half.
It's in the second half though that the movie really expands from something slight and amusing enough to something better. Once Whitacre becomes the FBI's focus and you start to see what Whitacre's really up to, his character only becomes more complex and Damon's performance all the more impressive. Is he naive, malicious, stupid, crazy? You don't really get any answers, but it's certainly fun to try to figure out.
I've seen some reviews complaining about the '70s aesthetic for a movie set in the '90s, but I think that only adds to the general tone of absurdity. The '70s mood makes as much sense in this environment as all the stand-up comedians who populate the cast. In addition to McHale in a major part, there's also Tony Hale (Arrested Development's Buster) as Whitacre's lawyer, and cameos by Patton Oswalt, Best Week Ever host Paul F. Tompkins, and Scott Adsit (30 Rock's Pete).
Since the main jist of the comedy is the incomprehensibility of its lead's actions, the incompatibility of the style and some of the cast only raises the laughs. Which all makes sense for a satire about greed and business ethics. But I'm making this movie sound more serious and thought-provoking than it actually is. The movie's good for laughs, but it's Damon and his character that make it more.
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