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Pierce on Movies

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Sunday, September 20, 2009

Short and Awesome

Here is just a great example of short, to the point, effective filmmaking.

Check this out.

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The Informant! Review

matt damon in the informant


Steven Soderbegh's new film plays like The Insider meets Fargo. It is a funny, perplexing, and even tense movie that is definitely worth the trip to the theatre.

The Informant! is based on Kurt Eichenwald’s The Informant (A True Story) about Mark Whitacre (played here by Matt Damon), President of the Bioproducts division and corporate Vice President of Archer Daniels Midland or ADM, a Fortune 500 agricultural corporation. In the early 1990s, Whitacre began informing the Federal Bureau of Investigation about a price-fixing scheme involving ADM and its competitors around the world – hence the title.

To put it simply, Whiteacre rats out his company for breaking the law. But story isn't the concern of Steven Sodergh's film - he is interested in exploring the characters that inhabit this world. Soderbergh has a proven track record assembling ensemble casts, like in Ocean’s 11 through 13, and The Informant! is no exception. Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, and Joel McHale make up a very strong core and are supported by wonderful small performances by Tom Papa and Melanie Lynskey.

Scott Bakula brings such a sweet confidence to FBI Special Agent Brian Shepard. There is a quiet power to him. When Whitacre first meets Sheperd, the FBI is installing a wiretap on his phone to monitor business calls to Whitacre from a Japanese informant regarding the prescence of a sabatuer at ADM. Just before he leaves, Whitacre stops him and reveals ADM's price-fixing. Sheperd calmly listens and takes the information to his superiors, always reassuring Whitacre. And that is how Bakula continues to play Sheperd throughout the film. He always remains attentive and assertive, pushing Whitacre occasionally but always calmly. When he looks at Whitacre, his eyes show that he is trying to figure him out, and that he worries that Whitacre may not fully understand the gravity of turning on the powerful corporation he works for. Along with his partner, FBI Special Agent Bob Herndon – a surprisingly reserved and quietly funny performance by Joel McHale – they create a team that seems to genuinely care about Whitacre and what he is doing - they never forget that Whitacre is a person, not just a source of information. They carry a picture of his family to remind themselves of that very fact. These two, while funny and touching, never steal scenes. Bakula and McHale always look to Damon to lead the scene and follow him wherever he goes. They support the main character, like a good supporting cast should, a quality that is all too often overlooked.

As for the main event, Matt Damon is incredible as Mark Whitacre. He is stuttering, unsure, geeky, and pudgy -- really pudgy. Damon gained thirty pounds for The Informant! by pulling a Morgan Spurlock and eating almost exclusively McDonald’s fast food for weeks. You will laugh over and over again every time he drifts into an inner monologue to talk about polar bears’ hunting habits or girls’ panties dispensers in Japan. Whenever the world becomes too intense around him, he retreats into this world of trivial knowledge, the reason for which is revealed as the film approaches its climax. But as off the wall as he can get, Damon grounds Whitacre as a moral man, a man that turned on a company paying him more than a quarter of a million dollars each year because he wanted to do the right thing and protect his family. And even though he knows helping the FBI is the right thing to do, he still feels loyal to ADM and is reluctant to betray them. He tells the FBI about the price-fixing and agrees to wear a wire but doesn't record conversations onto tapes. He records conversations onto tapes but keeps rescheduling meetings to hand over the tapes. It is these inconsistincies that make him flesh and blood - because human beings are callow.

It is through Damon’s performance that the film reveals itself to be not a conspiracy movie but an in-depth character study. The investigations of ADM are background to Damon's performance, which begs questions about why Whitacre was blowing the whistle and what the consequences will be for his breach of trust.

Sure there are flaws. The film drags a little in the middle and towards the end, when it digresses into uncovering the actions taken by Whitacre behind the back of the FBI. It's not that these actions are uninteresting but there is too much back and forth between the FBI and Whitacre before the truth is uncovered. As the film goes on, the grindhouse-style titles and music (which have become so popular lately thanks to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino) begin to play like jokes you’ve already heard the punch lines to. But the movie never stops being fun. And that is the key. Soderbergh and his cast keep you laughing, thinking, and caring. And that's pretty damn good in my book.

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