Recently a video of a father and daughter at a Phillies baseball game has taken the Internet by storm. In it, a father catches a foul ball to a roaring crowd and in his excitement, gives it to his 3-year-old daughter who, without skipping a beat, goes on to throw it right back down towards the field. You can’t help feel conflicted as you laugh and are horrified as you watch the father’s jaw drop in disbelief. This feeling is more or less how I felt watching “The Informant”. This movie is simply mesmerizing.
The poster for “The Informant” is simply a close-up of the pudgy, mustachioed face of Matt Damon with the word “UNBELIEVABLE”. The content and events depicted in this movie are exactly that – and what’s more, they are true! This actually happened. I kept repeating that to myself over and over watching this movie. It is mind-blowing, to be honest. Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, the youngest VP of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the early nineties. ADM is a food-processing conglomerate dealing in raw materials like cocoa, soy, and corn. Despite a ridiculously large salary and ample advancement opportunity, Mark decides to blow the whistle on ADM’s price-fixing tactics. For the next 3 years, he works closely with the FBI and wears a wire in order to gather evidence against the conglomerate. What is truly amusing is watching the evolution of Mark’s delusions as time progresses. He is so enamored of himself and his cause that he is blind to the dangers he exposes himself to. The result is a complete upheaval of his moral compass which then starts to spiral out of control. You have to wonder how a human being with such a mindset could survive never mind get a PhD and earn a six-figure income.
As Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon is almost unrecognizable under the extra 40 lbs he packed on for the role and bad hairpiece. It is hard to imagine him ever topping this role. His dopey and clueless exterior mask a cleverness so effectively that it is hard to see what is coming even if you are aware of the real Whitacre’s ultimate fate. Almost as impressive is the bevy of well-known and talented comedians who fill out the rest of the cast, from Dick Smothers to Patton Oswalt. The true comedy in this movie comes from watching these funnymen play it straight against Damon’s almost cartoony portrayal. Their vocal and physical reactions to the slow-moving train wreck that Whitacre unleashes are as stunning and hysterical as the Internet video I mentioned earlier. The result is truly entertaining.
A word of warning: This movie has a very slow and deliberate pace. This is not a bad thing, however, as it serves to let you effectively process the uncanny events that unfold. Though not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny, “The Informant” is one of the most engrossing and humorous movies I have seen in a good long time.
