The Informant Review
“The Informant” is a true story of the highest-ranking corporate whistleblower in US history, with Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, a rising star at an agri-industry giant who imagined himself to be some kind of secret agent by exposing his company’s price-fixing to the FBI in the 90s. Only Whitacre wasn’t all that he seemed, neglecting to mention to the FBI the $9.5 million he’d siphoned off from the corporate coffers.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, The Informant! stars Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, an employee at Illinois-based ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), a company that produces food additives, among other things. Whitacre, a Ph.D. from an Ivy League school, works in biochemistry, but eventually climbs the corporate ladder and finds himself working behind a desk making a very comfortable living. That is until one day, he finds himself in a mess of trouble when the company’s lysine production is threatened by a virus in the bugs used to produce the lysine. It is Whitacre’s job to make the problem go away, lest the company continue to lose millions of dollars each and every month…read more [Empire Movies]
Steven Soderbergh’s new film, The Informant, takes a serious issue and plays it for laughs. This is a strange choice, given the current economic climate and the greediness of the higher ups in corporate America, and it only occasionally works. The film’s tone is constantly being shifted from one extreme (goofy comedy) to another (serious drama), and one has to wonder if the film believes in its subject, or even cares for him. That man in question is Mark Whitacre, employee of the food producing Archer Daniels Midland, a company that was suspected of price fixing in the mid 1990s. Whitacre, suspecting illegal activity, went undercover for the FBI for two and a half years, and wound up doing more harm to himself than the company he was trying to report; he was guilty of as much stuff as they were. Was he naïve, mentally ill, or just plain dumb? Confusingly, the film implies all three…read more [411mania.com]
Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant!” Poster
Yahoo Movies has premiered a new poster for Matt Damon comedy/thriller “The Informant!,” directed by Oscar winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. He is best known for directing the films “Sex, Lies, and Videotape”, “Erin Brockovich”, “Traffic”, the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, and biopic “Che.”
Based on Kurt Eichenwald’s 2000 book, “The Informant!” is the tale of Mark Whitacre (played by Matt Damon), an Ivy League Ph.D. who was a rising star at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the early 1990s. The bipolar hero wound up blowing the whistle on the company’s price fixing tactics and became the highest-ranked executive to ever turn whistleblower in US history. Whitacre secretly gathered hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes over several years to present to the FBI which became one of the largest price fixing cases in history. In the story Whitacre’s good deed dovetails with his own major infractions and struggle with severe bipolar disorder.
Soderbergh’s new film, starring Matt Damon, Frank Welker, Melanie Lynskey, Scott Bakula, Patton Oswalt, Tony Hale, Thomas F. Wilson, Joel McHale and Eddie Jemison, will hit theaters on October 9th, 2009.
First Matt Damon’s “The Informant” Trailer!
Warner Bros. Pictures has released the trailer for “The Informant,” Steven Soderbergh’s new film, starring Matt Damon, Frank Welker, Melanie Lynskey, Scott Bakula, Patton Oswalt, Tony Hale, Thomas F. Wilson, Joel McHale, and Eddie Jemison.
Matt Damon | The Informant
In the movie, the US government decides to go after an agri-business giant with a price-fixing accusation, based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president turned informant Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), who is the highest-level whistle-blower the FBI ever managed to flip. The film is based on Kurt Eichenwald’s 2000 best-seller “The Informant: A True Story.”
The film is made based on a nonfiction thriller book written by journalist Kurt Eichenwald. Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) penned the screenplay.
“The Informant” is scheduled to open on October 9th, 2009, after debuting at the Toronto Film Festival.
