The Steven Soderbergh movie mafia rolls on with his quirky industrial thriller “The Informant!” Like the “Insider” with laughs, the film focuses on the cutthroat world of corporate agriculture and espionage in the 90s.
A puffy Matt Damon, complete with a Ned Flanders tash, is corporate whistleblower Mark Whitacre. Whitacre is a rising star in the agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland. Mark has it all, a great wife, gorgeous house, fast cars and the opportunity to travel the world on the back of his job. The only thing missing from his James Bond lifestyle is the spying.
Perhaps this is the reason he decides to work with Scott Bakula’s FBI agent Brian Shepard (look out for his Mr. Spock hairdo) and lift the lid on his company’s price-fixing conspiracy. Damon’s performance is as anti-Bourne as his Jason Bourne was anti-Bond. Whitacre is besotted with wiretaps, hidden cameras and clandestine hotel meetings. He is an executive with delusions of grandeur, a budding Napoleon Solo from “The Man From U.N.C.L.E”
His kid-in-a-candy-shop routine greatly exasperates Shepard and his partner, Bob Herndon. Mark’s dalliance with video surveillance equipment is more like an episode of “Candid Camera” than “Mission Impossible.” The simple act of walking through a set of doors is turned into a dramatic event: ”7.30 a.m. I am approaching the entrance to the office. Entrance breached.” He even slams phones down unnecessarily.
Mark’s running commentary is not just aimed at the agents at the other end of his hidden wire though. Constantly, we are treated to his bizarre stream of consciousness through Damon’s cheesecake narration. Gems like, “Polar bears cover their noses before they pounce on a seal. How do polar bears know their noses are black? Did they look in the water one day, see their reflection and say, ‘Man, I’d be invisible if it wasn’t for that thing,’ ” make us gradually question Mark’s motives. Is he an altruistic hero, a fantasist or is he hiding something himself?
Soderbergh, aided by both Damon’s personable turn as Mark and Marvin Hamlisch’s retro score, injects “The Informant!” with a certain business class glamour. The stilted corporate world of Archer Daniels Midland meets Matt Helm/Derek Flint whenever the music takes over. Even this could be Mark’s own soundtrack to his increasingly preposterous story, which is all the more ridiculous because it was all true.