The Informant!

**** Stars

There is a reason why Matt Damon is a movie star, and he proves it with his performance in The Informant!, Steven Soderbergh's screwball dramedy about a man who wants to do the right thing by taking down the corrupted company he works for, but in the process takes down himself.

Damon plays Marc Whitacre, a worker for the lysine developing company ADM. He is respected in the business community and successful in his personal life (he has a loving wife and children). He decides to do something about his company's price fixing tactics by taking it to the FBI. Over the span of the early 90's, Whitacre collected hundreds of tapes that proved the company's criminal activity.

.

Unfortunately, his severe bipolar disorder forced him to basically work for both sides. As Whitacre dug himself deeper and deeper into his actions, the people around him began to discover that Whitacre may be a very unstable man. After years of work as a near-perfect informer, Whitacre became more than what he seemed. I won't tell you exactly what he did (in respect to those who want to enter the film blind), but I will tell you that what he did is part of this country's history that is extremely relevant to the times we live in. Whitacre, suffering from bipolar disorder, dealing with being an informant for the FBI, and desperately trying to hold his family together, became so entangled with telling people the truth, lies, conspiracies, gossip, and evidence that he forgot who he was, what he did, and what he had become.

The Informant! is fascinating. For the whole film, Damon, playing Whitacre, is basically narrating what is happening inside his mind. At first I thought the voiceover would be distracting, yet I found myself completely engaged by it. It sucks you into his mind, traps you, and refuses to let go. The script, written with precise detail by Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum) deserves an Oscar nomination for best screenplay. Burns gets so deep inside Whitacre's mind, that he has the character tell you his favorite body part (his hands) and why he wants people to focus on them. He tells us that one time he saved a man's life from choking by giving him CPR, and then explains how they still keep in touch through holiday cards. While it seems a bit pointless, and from an outside perspective rather boring, I can assure you it's not. The Informant! is an absorbing piece of cinema, showcasing Matt Damon like you've never seen him before. It's one of his best performances ever, in one of the best movies of the year.