The Informant!
Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Scott Z. Burns, based on the book by Kurt Eichenwald. With Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynskey, Lucas McHugh Carroll, Eddie Jemison, and Rusty Schwimmer. (R)
In the early 1990s, the FBI was called in to investigate a possible case of extortion and industrial espionage at agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. The company's research involving the amino acid lysine was continually, mysteriously failing; nobody could pinpoint the problem, but the delay was costing the company tens of millions. Then one day BioProducts division president Mark Whitacre walked in to his boss's office with a bombshell—a Japanese rival had telephoned, told him ADM was being sabotaged, and offered to give up the name of the saboteur for mere millions.
There was only one problem: Whitacre was a spectacular liar.
Whether or not Whitacre himself was the saboteur is a detail lost in a bigger story; once the FBI got involved the case quickly escalated into one of the biggest price-fixing investigations in our country's history, with Whitacre—a maddening, delusional, but endlessly compelling figure—at its center. His life, from unlikely whistleblower to lonely pariah, makes up the fascinating, frequently hilarious new film The Informant!, from director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, and the Ocean's Eleven series of sparkly heist films). For fans of Soderbergh, this new film is a welcome return to an idiosyncrasy missing from much of his latest work.
Matt Damon stars as Whitacre, who was the youngest division president in ADM's history. A well-educated man who lived abroad for many years—he speaks fluent German, and recalls Tokyo businessmen buying used panties from vending machines in the Ginza—he nonetheless retains an essential Midwestern squareness that is the mark of his upbringing. (Though he claims to be the adopted son of an amusement park magnate, that story, like so many in his life, turns out to be less than accurate.) His steel-rim glasses are over-large and out of date, and the ridiculousness of his hairpiece is matched only by his moustache. Yet his obliviousness allows him an unearned bravado; he repeatedly invokes Tom Cruise's role in the legal thriller The Firm as his closest approximation.
His initial involvement with the FBI comes only at the insistence of his endlessly loyal wife Ginger (a wide-eyed Melanie Lynskey), who threatens to spill the beans about the price-fixing if he won't. But once he's on the inside with special agents Brian Shepard and Bob Herndon (a deadpan Scott Bakula and Joel McHale), he can't get enough—though he claimed always to be on the verge of quitting, he eventually spent two and a half years working with the Bureau, and delivered hundreds of audio tapes detailing the illegal activity.
It seems like an open and shut case—though the clueless Whitacre thinks he'll be able to stay at ADM after the feds get rid of "the bad guys"—but then a company lawyer turns up a stray invoice that turns the whole story on its head. The whistleblower, it turns out, is not only an inveterate liar but a thief on a grand scale—but as with Soderbergh's other, glossier heist movies, we find ourselves hesitating to condemn.
That is largely thanks to Damon, who put on 30 or 40 pounds for the role and disappears into the soft edges of the corn-fed businessman. Rarely have any of the actor's previous roles made such use of his everyman features—short and pugnacious, Damon has never been movie-star handsome, but here his blandness is essential, and to his credit, Damon never tries to give Whitacre a whit of glamour. More surprising is the depth of his performance, which signals a sensitivity that Damon's bread-and-butter action movies rarely find room to include.
But the film also owes much of its tone to its composer, the legendary Marvin Hamlisch. His jaunty, jazzy score not only keeps the film from dipping into depression, it reflects its protagonist's ability to do the same; even in the darkest moments of The Informant!, Hamlisch's music reflects the unassailable optimism of Mark Whitacre, a man who believed, against all odds, that everything would turn out fine. For a while, at least, Hamlisch and Soderbergh make you believe it too.
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Also this week: Today's film lovers live in exciting times. The ever-shifting landscape of technology has always been closely tied to the film industry, but lately it seems that one sea change follows another. Cameras got smaller, and some stopped using film; digital projectors grew powerful enough to make DVDs a viable medium for big screens—a boon for small filmmakers, who can now afford to distribute their work nationwide instead of pouring thousands into a single traditional print. But DVDs themselves seem to be on the tail end of their reign, as more and more people turn to their computer screens—or even, believe it or not, their phones—for much of their movie fare.
But however people watch at home, the theater experience isn't going anywhere, and one of the bonuses of all this new technology is that theaters have more flexibility than ever in bringing special events to the screen. Area cinemas now regularly beam in everything from live opera and theater to heavyweight bouts and Red Sox games—on Friday, you can buy your peanuts and Cracker Jack at West Springfield's Showcase Cinemas when Boston takes on the Yankees. One week later, Hadley's Cinemark theater brings in Peter Jackson's (The Lord of The Rings trilogy) cult favorite Dead Alive for a midnight screening. Baseball and a movie featuring zombie sex and a kung-fu priest—who says there's nothing new at the movies?
The digital revolution has also given rise to a plethora of small film festivals; this Saturday the town of Ashfield presents its own Third Annual Ashfield FilmFest. The community event was conceived as a way to honor the legendary Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments), who was born in the town and inspired the golden "Baby Cecil" statue awarded to the festival's winning filmmaker.
While the festival is open to professional filmmakers, the bulk of the films submitted are by amateurs inspired to take up the camera. The local flavor of it all extends to the entries, whose plots or locations must be tied to the town—a 2007 entry bears the self-explanatory title The Ashfield Fall Festival—What Did You Eat There?, while another imagines a zombie DeMille (what is it with zombies?) trekking to Ashfield for the holidays. (You can find Home For the Holidays and many other past entries on YouTube.) This year there are 15 entrants, but the festival's five-minute limit on running time is sure to keep the night from dragging. In addition to the main entries, the organizers will be screening shorts featuring local musicians' takes on famous movie themes. For more information, visit ashfieldfilmfest.org, or just show up at Town Hall and enjoy the show.
