The Informant! ***1/2

The Informant! solidifies that Steven Soderbergh will continue to be as prolific as ever, seemingly undaunted by the experience of making Che, his most ambitious and challenging project to date. In his newest film, Matt Damon stars as Mark Whitacre, a biochemist turned businessman working for the lysine developing company ADM. When a Japanese competitor reveals to Mark that the reason lysine production has dropped is because a mole has been sabotaging ADM from within, the FBI is brought in to investigate the situation. Then Whitacre drops the bombshell: what the FBI really should be investigating is ADM’s involvement in international price fixing.

So Whitacre turns informant. Or so it seems. He agrees to provide the FBI with tapes proving the price fixing scheme, but he then says the Japanese blackmailer has stopped demanding money for the mole’s identity. He makes no tapes. He claims ADM has changed its ways. The FBI doesn’t believe him, so they give him a polygraph. He fails. This is how Mark Whitacre finally agrees to fully cooperate, and he proceeds to provide hundreds of tapes over the course of nearly three years to the FBI proving that ADM’s corporate malfeasance resulted in the defrauding of hundreds of millions of dollars from consumers worldwide.

If it were only that simple. While The Informant! has been compared to Michael Mann’s whistle-blowing thriller The Insider, it has as much in common with another Russell Crowe vehicle, A Beautiful Mind. Like John Nash, Mark Whitacre lived a double life; he was convinced of his ability and his importance, and he believed in the power of secret intel. “You can call me 0014,” says Whitacre, “because I’m twice as smart as 007.” Whereas the other films are carried by thrilling sequences, however, The Informant! is slower and more comedic.

Matt Damon is terrific as Whitacre, displaying impeccable comedic timing and psychological nuance. The scenes in which he is under pressure are the most satisfying, as you never know if his response is genuine or false. If you do not already know the story, I will not spoil the ending. Suffice it to say, Mark Whitacre lied, cheated, and stole. But he was also an informant. And things are never as simple as they seem. It’s not until the end that we realize that The Informant! is first and foremost a character study of a man we are warned to judge cautiously. There’s no doubt that whether he was with his bosses at ADM or his FBI contacts, Mark Whitacre was always the smartest man in the room. And the dumbest.