Movie Review: Matt Damon is "The Informant!"

Steven Soderbergh's third effort to be released in the last 12 months (fourth if you count "Che" as two pictures) is "The Informant!", a comic corporate thriller about real-life whistle-blower Mark Whitacre. Whitacre, who suffered from bipolar disorder, became notorious as being the highest-ranking executive in U.S. history to snitch in a case of corporate fraud. In the end, Whitacre succeeded in revealing Archer Daniels Midland's price-fixing tactics, but meanwhile wound up with a prison sentence three times longer than the criminal executives he successfully exposed.

Matt Damon, who gained thirty pounds for the role, dons an ugly toupee and a mustache for the task of playing Whitacre. He's not your typical hero - he never quite tells the whole truth, he often blatantly lies, and he displays the intellect of a 9-year-old with severe attention deficit disorder in the process. Through inner monologue, Damon's Whitacre often indulges his wealth of useless trivia while receiving briefing by the FBI - facts about polar bears, butterflies, and the panties of young girls in Japanese vending machines.

Whitacre becomes involved with special agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) after revealing a huge price-fixing scheme on lysine, an amino acid, concocted by agribusiness giant ADM. For two and a half years, Whitacre wears a wire, providing hundreds of tapes for the ongoing investigation. In the process, however, Whitacre's ignorance jeopardizes the entire case - he narrates his tapes, introducing everyone he encounters by name and job title, and even starts fiddling with his Nagra device during a business meeting with the executives he's in the process of exposing.

Soderbergh doesn't let us too close to Whitacre - we share the frustrations of the FBI agents and lawyers trying to get a straight story out of him. While a lesser actor might make such a character frustrating, however, Damon has such an abundance of charisma that he's pleasant company throughout. We may groan when, later in the film, Whitacre attempts completely asinine counter-lawsuits against both ADM and the FBI, but no matter how deep he digs himself into a hole, we're always pulling for him. Whitacre, often saying that the conspiracy is like "something out of a Crichton novel", pegs himself to be a super-spy - 0014, in fact, as he's twice as smart as 007.

Damon will probably be an oversight come Oscar season, but it may be one of the actor's very best performances. The supporting cast is all wonderful, as well, from Melanie Lynskey as Whitacre's wife to the terrifically deadpan Scott Bakula. "The Informant!" is yet another film in Soderbergh's repertoire that solidifies him as one of the most interesting, and certainly one of the most diverse, American directors working today.