There’s a moment late in the third act of Steven Soderbergh’s whirlygig whistleblower farce “The Informant!” (the exclamation point is key) that makes you totally reassess the whole movie. It’s not a twist, per se, but it’s a character beat that makes you realize that the movie, which up until that point had been fairly jolly, complete with a relentlessly buoyant score by Marvin Hamlisch and a dopey, winning performance by a pudgy Matt Damon, is a much deeper, more complex experience.
Up until this point, you’re just along for the ride.”The Informant!” is the mostly true tale of Marc Whitacre (Damon), a BioProducts director at Archer Daniel Midlands, a company that processes corn so it can be turned into high fructose corn syrup for use in, well, just about everything. At some point, Whitacre discovers a massive price fixing conspiracy and, after being prodded by his wife (“Heavenly Creatures'” Melanie Lynskey), turns informer, working alongside a couple of straight arrow FBI agents (Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) to bring the company down.
The comedy comes from Whitacre, who is a well meaning dope that seems to bungle his way through every operation, and the fact that we really don’t know what the company does or what the conspiracy is all about, because anytime any real information can be gathered, we’re treated to deliriously asinine narration by Whitacre on the subject of unnatural deaths, zoo animals, and tie patterns. Some of the humor is also derived from its early-1990’s setting, with frequent mentions to “Crichton novels” and, later, to both the novel and film versions of John Grisham’s “The Firm.”
It’s wacky, for sure, but it’s a testament to Soderbergh’s delicate tonal balancing act that some scenes, no matter how over-the-top, no matter how blaringly polyester the score gets, still has an undercurrent of real suspense. Soderbergh may have decided to invert the selfless do-gooder of his “Erin Brokovich” into a lying stooge, but his inane knack for storytelling mechanics still manages to goose you for a few thrills.
The movie looks gorgeous, with Soderbergh shooting dreary early-1990’s cubicles with the same visual lushness that he visited the South American rainforests of “Che” (he also shot this on the next-generation Red digital camera), and Matt Damon absolutely dazzles. At some point Damon disappears and it’s only Mark Whitacre – paunchy, playing with his toupee, lying through his teeth. In a way, it’s just as skillful and nuanced a performance as anything he’s given (reminiscent, in a weird way, of “The Talented Mr. Ripley”), but it won’t be given the same attention because it’s part of a larger, goofier whole.
The supporting cast (with many comedians in tiny roles, including both Smothers Brothers) is roundly superb. Bakula, in particular, brings some much needed weightiness to the movie, and his reactions to Whitacre’s bumbling are a marvel – a mixture of outrage, surprise, and an odd strand that’s kind of impressed. (Whitacre, in his way, was a remarkable spy.)
But it’s in the movie’s home stretch, when the investigation ratchets up and the heat turns inwards, towards Whitacre that the mastery of Soderbergh’s film shines through. Whitacre is much more than he appears, and it’s not going to do anybody any favors by giving away some of the thrills and spills that are delivered in this section, but it goes without saying that both Damon and Soderbergh have been working on a multilayered piece this entire time, and for all the broad humor, the gags, and the funny hair, there’s something fairly deep going on here (what that “something” is, you’ll have to suss out for yourself). Soderbergh could have made a straightforward, righteous anti-corporate greed screed, something like Michael Mann’s “The Insider,” but he didn’t. He stayed true to himself and his sensibilities (who else would have used that garish disco font?), and concocted this bizarre comedy-thriller-biopic model, creating something wholly unique and powerful (and, yes, goofy). [A] – Drew Taylor