The Informant!
The Informant!, starring Matt Damon, based on the book The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald and directed by Steven Soderbergh is the true story of the largest tattle-tale in U.S. history! Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) is a man on his way to the top of the food additive industry company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) but suddenly finds himself in need of a clean conscience. Turning his company into the FBI (Scott Bakula & Joel McHale )for price fixing across nations Whitacre becomes a number one informant, but apparently that’s not all hes good at. Hes also hard at work building the deranged illusion that he will be moving up the company ladder after everyone is gone from the company. With this thinking in place it is full steam ahead gathering information for the FBI. Unfortunately, Whitacre didn’t seem to think skimming a little off the top for himself wasn’t all that bad, but apparently the FBI saw $9.5 million as a little problem. When imaginative lies and truth cant be deciphered from one another the FBI have their work cut for them reining in their informant.
What an interesting character. That movie would not have been even half as interesting without that extraordinary performance. Matt Damon was outstandingly odd to perfection, and quite entertaining. I did enjoy it for the most part, but got a little bored about half way through. The beginning was marginally more entertaining than the later half of the film. The pace really slows down toward the end. That and I have a short attention span. My mind started to wonder after the story stopped progressing and the truth was impossible to decipher from all the vivid lies Whitacre conjured up. I laughed a good deal throughout the film, but a lot more toward the beginning. There is a good bit of dry humor so if you’re not into that type of humor you may not find it quite as funny as I did. As funny as parts were, it wasn’t quite funny enough or emotionally impacting enough to leave a lasting impression. The last half of the film didn’t have enough punch to leave you with an outstanding impact. It dragged a good bit and was a little lack luster.
Visuals & Audio
The quality of the film was fantastic. It was presented in 1080p High Definition 16×9 and really looked great. Everything was incredibly sharp and crisp. The coloring was wonderful whether it was a light scene or a darker one. It had a great late 80’s/early 90’s look too it. (Loved the ugly ties)
The sound in Dolby TrueHD: English 5.1; French 5.1; Spanish 5.1 was also great. Most of the film was dialogue driven so the sound was pretty much straight forward. All conversations were nice and clean. No distracting background interruptions.
Subtitles include English SDH, French, and Spanish.
Special Features
-Exclusive to Blu-ray- Commentary by Director Steven Soderbergh and Screenwriter Scott Burns
-Deleted Scenes-DVD and Blu-ray
When it comes to special features for The Informant! things are pretty disappointing, but only when it comes to quantity. There may not be much, but what we were presented with was pretty good. The commentary was by far the best part. Steven Soderbergh gave a lot of extra details that were nice to know. The deleted scenes were all good as well, I just wished there would have been more of them to watch. Considering this film was based off a true story it would have been interesting to know more of the minor truths and falsehoods of what really happened.