Informant!
2009
***½
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynskey, Thomas F. Wilson, Tom Papa, Rick Overton
In the early 1990s Mark Whitacre, an executive in a bio-chem firm ADM, became a whistleblower for the FBI. He claimed that the company and its competitors across the world were involved in price-fixing. However, by employing his services over a period of three years, the Bureau got way more than they bargained for. This comedy from Kurt Eichenwald's book is wacky, amusing and unusual, and a bit exhausting towards the end. Matt Damon gives a wonderful performance as the nerdish informant who slowly paints himself into a corner. It's all pleasantly deadpan, although Whitacre's rambling narration and Marvin Hamlisch's over-exuberant score hammer home the story's quirkiness.
