THE INFORMANT is one of those films that really suffered from a horrible marketing campaign.  Studios have to learn that even though they might cheat some ticket sales by misleading audiences about a movie, the end result will be detrimental when all of those people feel let down because they didn’t get what they wanted.  In this case, every preview and commercial made THE INFORMANT out to be a slapstick comedy that was going to keep you laughing throughout.  Although I found the film to be hilarious, it definitely isn’t funny in that traditional sense and comedy was not the overriding theme.  This is a clever, intelligent character study that happens to be quite humorous.

Matt Damon is Mark Whitacre, a fast rising executive at food chemical company that seems to have everything going for him.  When his boss is made aware of a potential saboteur within the company, they call the FBI in to investigate.  That sets in play a series of lies and manipulations on the part of Mark Whitacre who is constantly on the fence about who to trust and how far he wants to take the investigation.  Soon, the film’s story (and the FBI’s case) becomes more about Whitacre and less about the company they were investigating.

The issue with the film is that we never have any motivations on the part of Whitacre.  He tells the FBI about the price-fixing scheme his company is concocting with other companies, but it’s not clear why.  We know Mark is stealing money from his company, but with a high salary and big bonuses, his theft doesn’t make sense.  But this isn’t a fault to screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, this is just who Whitacre is.  I don’t think he would be able to tell you why he did the things he did and why he made specific decisions.  Although at times frustrating, it turned out that watching Whitacre go from lie to lie was actually fascinating because the audience learned about the lies around the same time the other characters in the film learned about them.  And we never really knew for sure what was a lie and what wasn’t.

Of course, with a lesser actor, this movie would have been a complete failure.  But Matt Damon is on his game as Whitacre and he delivers a wonderful performance as the wily executive.  It was a very natural and convincing performance that should have garnered him more attention than it did.  However, the funniest parts of the film came in the form of short voiceovers where Damon would go off on random thoughts while in the middle of a scene.  I found myself looking forward to those voiceovers and it was a nice way to break up the film.

If you know that you’re not getting a slapstick comedy, but rather an intelligent, quirky drama that happens to be funny, I think you’ll be impressed with THE INFORMANT.  It featured a fantastic performance from Damon and proved to be a very enjoyable film.

BLU-RAY REVIEW

Video: Soderbergh typically uses a flat, slightly fuzzy way of filming and this is no different.  However, the transfer looks great, but it’s only as good as the source material.

Audio: The TrueHD audio track was efficient, but the front channels were heavily used and overall I felt like this was holding back a bit.  It’s a dialogue heavy film, but I was a little disappointed in the audio track.

Commentary with Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns: If you’re a fan of commentaries, then you’ve probably heard a Soderbergh track before.  He does commentaries for almost all of his films and they’re all a joy to listen to.  He and Burns had a lot to talk about here, but they stick to the choices they made and avoid boring you with details, which I very much appreciated.  I recommend any Soderbergh commentary and this one is no exception.

Deleted Scenes (6:25): These were as good as anything in the movie and could have been left in without missing a beat.  You’ll recognize a couple of these from the previews and overall, these were worth watching.

Previews are commercials selling a product. We all know this. But just as some commercials can make us salivate over the next cool toy, some previews convince us that a movie is a “must see” – to use a phrase often used in such previews. When I saw the previews for Matt Damon’s performance in THE INFORMANT! I was sold on one such cool new toy. The director, Steven Soderbergh, isn’t known for doing comedy, although the OCEAN’S films can in some way be considered comedies. But the previews of Matt Damon fumbling through an FBI investigation of an agricultural business giant looked quirky and funny, and Matt Damon looked genuinely comfortable in the comedic role. But that was in the previews.

In the film, those scenes are not supplemented with anything substantial. Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a well-to-do Vice President with the company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), who wears God-awful ties, even for early 90’s, and conspires with his executives and their competitors in price-fixing. Whitacre consults with FBI agent Brian Shepard, played by Scott Bakula, and agrees to gather the evidence to bring down this conspiracy, which, given his status, made him the highest ranking executive to ever come forward in furtherance of a federal investigation. The scenes of him gathering the information, through audio and video surveillance are funny, including scenes in which Damon has to illicit the conspirators to say key words for prosecution. Bakula and Joel McHale play the straight men to Damon’s bumbling during these scenes very well. But most of the good parts of the investigation are used in the preview, and not much is added to them.

What follows the investigation, which takes place over several years, is where the movie really veers off any sort of recognizable path. It is less about Whitacre’s ineptitude at gathering information or testifying against the company, and more about his own self-destructive tendencies and bipolar disorder. The audience gets less laughs at Damon’s character and instead starts to just feel sorry for him. His behavior becomes so manic and inexplicable, you begin to even feel bad about laughing at his initial awkwardness. The film turns Mark Whitacre from a funny character into a sad one, and that was not what anyone was expecting after watching previews which geared us all up for a comedy. Sometimes surprises in a movie’s plot or tone can be positive. This is not one of those times.

Tony Hale has some good scenes later in the film as Whitacre’s lawyer James Epstein, which makes for another good performance from an “Arrested Development” alum, but that makes us look that much more forward to the eventual ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT movie for real comedy, not this comic/tragic hybrid Soderbergh gave us this summer.