All of this is detailed in the film, with Damon giving a quirky, nuanced performance that paints Whitacre as a random-minded, bipolar scatterbrain—albeit a brilliant, successful, highly-educated scatterbrain. The rest of the film’s performances are also quite sound. The highly-likeable Scott Bakula (Star Trek: Enterprise) plays FBI agent Brian Shepard. Shepard inadvertently becomes Whitacre’s handler when Whitacre approaches him following the conclusion of an unrelated, baseless FBI probe of commercial spying against ADM.
The information Whitacre offers reaches into the highest levels of both international business and world economics, and Shepard and his partner, agent Robert Herndon (Talk Soup’s Joel McHale), eagerly accept. What they don’t count on, however, is Whitacre’s idiosyncrasies and strange, illogical behavior as the investigation intensifies. Before one of the recorded business meetings, for instance, when the listening device in his briefcase malfunctions and starts vibrating, Whitacre opens the case, exposes the strapped-in device, fixes it and closes the case, all while the meeting obliviously proceeds.
Whitacre’s eccentricities don’t end there either. During the course of the film, he inappropriately confides in a number of people within ADM about his FBI cooperation and frequently talks as if the entire affair will prove a terrific career move, ultimately catapulting him into ADM’s highest echelons. Worst of all, during his FBI cooperation, Whitacre secretly engages in criminal behavior, embezzling company funds and forging documents. And although Whitacre’s cooperation ultimately leads to hefty fines for ADM ($500 million including a class action lawsuit) and prison sentences for three top-level executives, his own criminal activities merit a 10 1/2-year prison sentence—more than three times the sentences of the people he gathered evidence against.
Although the story behind The Informant is undeniably compelling, the film is not nearly so entertaining as might be expected. The humor in Whitacre’s situation seems obvious, but the laughs are far too sporadic. This owes, in part, to director Steven Soderbergh's (Ocean's 11-13) pacing. He moves at a pedantic clip, bogging things down, causing the audience to anticipate narrative acceleration instead of the next laugh or plot development. And Damon’s performance, though award-worthy, never reaches the comedic heights hinted at in the trailer. The funniest moments come during voice-overs by Damon that reflect Whitacre’s wandering thought patterns, with his mind spiraling from one wacky aside to the next. Those asides include contemplation of a fishing trip with his FBI handlers, the evolutionary disadvantages of polar bears having black noses, and others.
As portrayed in the film, Whitacre is a borderline compulsive liar too. He seems to have trouble differentiating his own falsehoods from reality. As one of his lawyers point out in one of the film’s more insightful moments, Whitacre is an untrained civilian, working undercover for almost 3 years. He’s emotionally unprepared for the strains of such work and his bizarre behavior can be readily explained by the immense pressure. As played by Damon, it's easy to believe Whitacre as a man teetering on emotional instability, a man whose anxiety and agitation manifests itself as bizarre, sometimes grandiose, sometimes inappropriate and counterintuitive behavior.
Overall, I can neither overwhelmingly recommend for or against The Informant. Although this film boasts noteworthy performances and a number of scattered laughs, a high percentage of the audience—if not the majority—will likely find major disparities between the film advertised and the film presented.
Score: 5/10
Starring: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynskey, Tony Hale, Thomas F. Wilson
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Released by: Warner Bros.
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