 DVD Review - The Informant!
Tamsin Cracknell
Based on the book by New York Times journalist Kurt Eichenwald, The Informant! is the true story of Mark Whitacre, a cheery up-and-coming businessman who turned corporate whistleblower and then proceeded to lose his mind in one of the most high-profile corporate crimes in history.
When the FBI begins sniffing around at agri-industry firm Archer Daniels Midland, hard-working Mark becomes entangled in a delicate situation. Under pressure from his bosses to assist The Bureau in a discreet and unsuspicious manner, Mark is suddenly overcome with moral righteousness and proceeds to reveal every nefarious detail of his beloved firm's earth-shakingly huge price-fixing racket.
FBI agents Sheperd (Scott Bakula, of Star Trek: Enterprise fame) and Herndon (comedian Joel McHale) snap up the investigation, and for the next three years, Mark revels in the glorious life of a covert, wire-wearing, phone-tapping double agent.
But when it’s time to prosecute the embezzling scumbags, it becomes frighteningly clear that Mark is, frankly, a complete lunatic, and has switched sides so many times that not even he can remember where his loyalty lies.
Despite a fairly bland subject matter (beige-suited executives at work in their global corn conglomerate), this is a thrilling psychological movie. The simultaneous development and unravelling of Mark's accusations, along with his grip on reality, will leave you feeling personally betrayed and more than a little creeped out by this likeable, seemingly harmless chump. Matt Damon has never been this funny or convincing, and the glaze of humour eerily amplifies the revelation that real-life psychopaths can pop up anywhere.
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