Either you’ll like “The Informant!” or you’ll hate it. Either you’ll enjoy Matt Damon’s portrayal of the duplicitous Mark Whitacre or you won’t. Either you’ll get pleasure from Whitacre’s outrageous behavior or you’ll say, ‘Enough!’ In 1992, a corporate vice president of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Mark Whitacre, confesses to an FBI agent (Scott Bakula) that ADM is fixing the price of lysine, an essential amino acid. For close to three years, Whitacre assists the FBI in gathering evidence by secretly taping business meetings around the world. Unfortunately for the FBI, some of Whitacre's accusations are true and some aren’t and they have trouble sorting it all out. You see, Whitacre suffers from manic-depression, also known as bipolar disorder, typified by grandiosity and self-delusion. Needless to say the FBI case shifts focus when they discover that Whitacre embezzled at least $9 million from ADM.
Matt Damon, 30 pounds heavier with an ugly toupee, plays Mark Whitacre straight, which balances his voice-over and the other silliness going on in the film, including Marvin Hamlisch’s circus music in the background. What is amusing, though, is Whitacre’s stream-of-consciousness: a clue that he is not tuned into what is going on around him. For example, he wonders if polar bears know that their black noses give them away; whether his car is pronounced Porsh-uh or Porsh; that his hands are his best feature. What can I say about a movie whose strength is its voice-over narration? 9/18/09
1 comment:
The Blogger has pretty much captured this flick and peculiar nature of this production. This seems to be the latest in a series of "off-the- wall" type films that Damon has appeared in the past few years. If you leave out the Jason Bourne epics you find movies like The Good shepherd, Running the Sahara, Margaret, The Brothers Grimm, etc. Could it be that Matt has been hanging around with Steven Soderbergh too much?? I give this film a 2 bagger out of a possible 5
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