The Informant!
2009 Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Synopsis
Based on a tattle-tale.
A rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Mark Whitacre suddenly turns whistleblower. Even as he exposes his company’s multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI, Whitacre envisions himself being hailed as a hero of the common man and handed a promotion.
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How did it take me so long to see this? Soderbergh's digital work has been all about the impersonality and barrage of data-gathering with new technology, from the detached process of CHE to the statistical crawl of a virus in CONTAGION. THE INFORMANT! may be one of the best displays of this, at once a tragedy and a comedy, a corporate thriller and an abject farce. The protagonist's rambling, distracted, often outright dishonest narration proves perfect for a film defined by his unpredictable oscillation of truth and lies. It's all just information to be stored on an FBI tape recorder, or a RED hard drive. That it is one of the most consistently amusing comedies of the last few years almost seems like a mere bonus.
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Soderbergh's apparent contempt for exposition spills from every scene. And Whitacre's seemingly nonsensical voice-over narrations give us a much better idea of his character than if he were explaining the plot to us. Matt Damon's best performance.
"I've been to Tokyo. They sell little-girl underwear in the vending machines right on the main drag, the Ginza, or whatever. Guys in suits buying used girl panties. How is that okay? That's not okay."
"What's the German word for "corn?" The word in German I really like is kugelschreiber. That's "pen." All those syllables just for "pen.""
"I don't like wool on skin. Not even that merino wool they have at Marshall Field in Chicago. Ginger likes it because it's formfitting, but she likes avocados. And who wants that texture in their mouth?"
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Such a fun film to watch-get a kick out of this one each time.
The highlight of the film is Damon-he is so good in this-he makes me laugh with every voice over he does-his facial expressions-his inability to tell the truth or listen to any advice or instructions given to him by his lawyers or the FBI. The madness begins or the first lie he tells occurs in the third or fourth scene-so 5 minutes in-it NEVER stops from that point and it keeps getting funnier and funnier.
Very cool to see Thomas F. Wilson in this even if it was for a brief time.
I loved Scott Bakula in this. He played off of Damon so well-his growing…
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Still weird and hilarious.
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Convoluted and slow, not my cup of tea. It was fun to see various interesting people in bit parts though. All in all that didn't make up for much though and the movie was just kind of average and forgettable. It was like watching 1:30 hour of nothing happening.
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Criminally underrated. To me, The Informant! marks the beginning of Soderbergh's most impressive stretch of work. Since his Oscar-winning direction of Traffic, Soderbergh has (and admittedly so) been searching for a new avenue with which to create. Experimenting in every facet -- lighting, storytelling, casting -- the director seems to have settled into his own (again?) with this near-masterpiece.
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Fatt Damon.
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life-affirmingly hilarious
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Story about an agriculture industry employee and compulsive liar who becomes a corporate whistle-blower in a multi-national price-fixing conspiracy. This movie achieves something that is a rarity these days, it is a smart comedy.
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(Reposted from Soderbergh review series)
(When polar bears hunt, they crouch down by a hole in the ice and wait for a seal to pop up. They keep one paw over their nose so that they blend in, because they've got those black noses. They'd blend in perfectly if not for the nose. So the question is, how do they know their noses are black? From looking at other polar bears? Do they see their reflections in the water and think, "I'd be invisible if not for that." That seems like a lot of thinking for a bear.)
2009 was dynamite year for Steven Soderbergh fans. While Che officially came out in 2008, many fans didn’t get to see it…
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Funny, but totally failed to engage me. I had trouble concentrating and at times I wasn't entirely sure what was going on. I didn't actually think this was bad, it just wasn't my kind of thing at all.
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Criminally underrated. To me, The Informant! marks the beginning of Soderbergh's most impressive stretch of work. Since his Oscar-winning direction of Traffic, Soderbergh has (and admittedly so) been searching for a new avenue with which to create. Experimenting in every facet -- lighting, storytelling, casting -- the director seems to have settled into his own (again?) with this near-masterpiece.
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One of Soderbergh's best. One of the few films that if you don't like, you're wrong.
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This film is based on an amazing story but the interesting parts of that story do not come across in the film. To really appreciate it in all its glory swerve the film and instead listen the the This American Life episode that told the whole tale around a year or two before this film was made