The lighter side of greed is still dark, and painfully relevant – by Nick van der Leek
What is the exclamation mark for, you ask? Well, The Informant! isn’t The Interpreter. Instead of Nicole Kidman, Matt Damon is the heavy hitter [and he’s about 15kg heavier than you’ve ever seen him before], and instead of the UN, there’s a company called ADM. It’s funny, but dark, and bleak, and at times, dull.
Look, it’s a comedy, but based on a true story authored by Kurt Eichenwald. Whitacre [Damon] plays the highest-ranking corporate whistleblower in
“Everyone in this country is a victim of corporate crime by the time they finish breakfast.”
Initially it looks to be about embezzlement, collusion and corporate espionage. But there’s something kookoo about Whitacre. He talks a lot. And what he says doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Well, it does and it doesn’t. For example:
‘Polar bears cover their noses before they pounce on a seal. How do polar bears know their noses are black? Did they look in the water one day, see their reflection and say, "Man, I'd be invisible if it wasn't for that thing."’
Damon describes it as ‘a great story and a really incredible character…You start with a certain set of assumptions and then realise you can’t assume anything as the situation becomes utterly ridiculous.’
There is a lot of voiceover in this flick, an idea screenwriter Scott Burns proposed right off the bat to director Soderbergh. The voiceover becomes so mixed-in with what is happening, that sometimes Whitacre provides in-screen voice-over to his wire while he walks through his office, loudly introducing his secretary and other big shots to his chest-level microphone. During a company meeting, a recorder in his briefcase jams, and in virtually full view of everyone, opens the briefcase and attempts to fix it.
And there are plenty more jaw droppers after that.
Soderbergh chose Damon for his ‘inherent believability’, the ‘nice young man’ quality. There is not a trace of Bourne here, just a pompous, over-analytical stuffed suit. When he says, ‘That’s it, I’ve told you everything,’ you believe him.
About Whitacre Damon says: ‘[He] was also bald and wore a hairpiece, but the hairpiece was so good that no one knew he didn’t have hair. It’s actually a great metaphor for the character. It was right there in front of everybody and nobody ever figured it out.’
‘I’ve always thought when this is over there’d still be a place for me at ADM. I’ve still got a lot of friends there.’
My impressions of the flick? A lot if it looked and felt like burnt paper. You know, lots of tobacco yellow tones, burnt hues, Vaseline light. I didn’t like the color; it seemed too old and out of focus. A lot of the action happens in office space; ordinary spaces that most people want to get away from, and forget about when they go to the movies. It’s boring. It’s about the messy business of lies, lies and cover ups. It’s about as inspiring as reading your local newspaper. The dialogue, and Damon-on-too-much-coffee lifts it, but not enough.
On the plus side, it probably sketches the archetype of the type of person that becomes a ponzi schemer, and the schmucks that get caught out. It demonstrates how a big mess becomes a giant, god awful fiasco. Soderbergh might think that is funny. It is darkly funny, but it’s also tragic. A judge in the flick labels Whitacre as ‘garden variety greed’. Damon steals the show [his character steals just about everything else], but it’s still a tragicomedy that’s all too real to really laugh off. And that’s what makes it so disturbing. It’s painfully relevant for right now.
Score: 7/10
Directed by Steven Soderbergh;
Based on the book by Kurt Eichenwald;
Released by Warner Brothers Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.
Starring: Matt Damon (Mark Whitacre), Scott Bakula (Agent Brian Shepard), Joel McHale (Bob Herndon) and Melanie Lynskey (Ginger Whitacre).
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