Twisted tale of The Informant
By Rama Gaind
The Informant: Based on a true story about a biochemist who became an informant, this is an unsettling account about embezzlement, price-fixing, cheating and a misleading corporate culture that directly impacts American lives.
Director Stephen Soderbergh gives his skewed take on this, but as a comedy.
What follows is a twisted tale.
Matt plays Mark Whiteacre, a rising star at a company called Archer Daniels Midland. ADM products, ingredients with names like sorbitol and lecithin, can be found on the labels of most foods.
As the youngest division president, Whiteacre earns enough money to live the dream life with a spacious house and a fleet of cars.
In the early 1990s, he turns into an FBI informant, supplying hundreds of tapes that implicate ADM in a price-fixing scheme. However, nothing is what it seems with Whiteacre, who soon becomes the informant from hell.
Told in well-designed frames, the film does not engage you emotionally. When you laugh, it sticks in your throat, because the text is gloomy and skeptical.
It’s worth seeing just for the brilliant character acting by an overweight Matt Damon. He is always tragic, yet intensely funny.
Where the Wild Things Are: Director Spike Jonze maintains the gloom and sadness of the book by Maurice Sendak.
It elaborates on the strange journey of wolf-suited Max. While the solemn undercurrent can be disconcerting, the puppetry and costumes are incredible.
