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 In cinemas Thursday [M]
Director: Stephen Soderbergh
Runtime: 108 mins
The costs and risks of being a whistleblower are usually so high that self-serving motives aren’t likely. Yet when American industrial chemist Mark Whitacre cooperated with the FBI to expose international price fixing in the agriculture industry, his behaviour was anything but typical. A self-styled heroic everyman, he fancied himself as the spy-next-door, but confused the feds by spinning as many yarns as truths in his four-year odyssey. He’s like a cross between Pinocchio and The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Was it deliberate obfuscation in a high stakes game of cat and mouse, or was Whitacre, the highest-ranking corporate whistle-blower in US history, simply a compulsive liar with a psychological disorder? Either way, Whitacre’s bizarre antics and the ensuing, almost farcical, sting in the tail make for a truth stranger than fiction.
Since this was no conventional whistleblower drama, director Stephen Soderbergh knew it needed an unconventional approach that capitalised on the story’s absurdity and what made Whitacre such an intriguing and fascinating character. The exclamation mark in the film’s title hints that The Informant! is played out in comic caper vein, confirmed by the opening artistic licence disclaimer conclusion, “So there.”
But whereas Soderbergh’s previous forays into this genre, the Oceans franchise, were more style than substance, Scott Burns’ screenplay based on Kurt Eichenwald’s book The Informant (A True Story) is inspired. It cleverly takes us inside the brilliant but scattered mind of Whitacre with an inner monologue voiceover pursuing random tangents and wishful fantasies. The device provides a funny and worrying insight, while the pacing of the action is kept brisk. Our own minds are kept ticking over trying to work out and keep track of what’s really going on, as inconsistencies and lies appear on the go. This enables us to see things, with varying degrees of sympathy, from both Whitacre and the FBI agents’ perspectives, while reserving judgement.
There’s so much going on that initially – before you realise just how convoluted and unexpected the story is going to be – trying to put together the pieces can distract you. Give yourself the luxury of knowing they’re not going to fall into place until the end, and even then, you might still be wondering about what you see.
Having worked with Matt Damon four times previously, Soderbergh knew Damon’s inherent “nice guy” quality made him ideal for portraying Whitacre’s human foibles without alienating the audience (all the more so with mo’ and an extra 14 kilos).
The same essence applies to Scott Bakula as his flummoxed foil, FBI agent Brian Shepherd. All the cast are terrific, playing it straight in their surreal circumstances, but tossing out zingers along the way. And composer Marvin “The Sting” Hamlisch’s Trust Me is a perfect coda.
****
OLIVIA STEWART
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