Film File - The Informant

That old school rhyme: "O what a tangle web we weave when first we practice to deceive" would work well as the subtext for this week's big movie. Based on the book, 'The Informant: A True Story', by Kurt Eichenwald, this Steven Soderbergh-directed tale details the strange case of how the FBI became involved with a senior executive at one of America's most politically powerful corporations, Archer Daniels Midland. In time, this informant became a confidential government witness, secretly recording a vast criminal conspiracy spanning five continents during the years 1992 to '96. Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), the promising golden boy of ADM, put his career and family at risk to wear a wire and deceive his colleagues as he turns whistleblower to expose his company's international price-fixing conspiracy. Whitacre envisions himself being hailed as a hero of the common man and handed a promotion - but before that can happen, the FBI needs evidence, so the mild-mannered executive eagerly agrees to wear a wire and carry a hidden tape recorder in his briefcase, imagining himself as a secret agent. As time progresses, however, it becomes clear to the FBI that their lead witness hasn't been quite so forthcoming about his own dubious role in the corporation as his ever-changing account becomes a fact and fiction stew of his increasingly vivid imagination. Damon observed of the role: "It's like peeling an onion. You start with a certain set of assumptions and then realise you can't assume anything as the situation becomes utterly ridiculous. It's a great story and a really incredible character." The story was so arresting to screenwriter Scott Z Burns that when he heard an interview with Eichenwald on the radio, he remembered being on his way to a brunch and instead ended up driving around the restaurant for the entire hour. In the hands of Soderbergh, the tale of the deskbound executive who suddenly gains secret agent status with the state-of-the-art gadgets to prove it, is an often hilarious investigation into the Walter Mitty in all of us. Whitacre is even designated Agent 0014 because he's "twice as smart as 007". For a man who had built his career on feeding sugar to microbes to create lysine, it was an exciting time. With his hairpiece, a whiskery moustache, plus an extra 30 pounds around the middle, Damon certainly entered the spirit of his screen persona for this role and leaves no trace of the rippling torso from 'The Bourne Identity' on display here….sorry, ladies. As the man who manages to convince a pair of FBI agents Shepard and Herndon (Joel McHale, Scott Bakula) that he's on to something big, the tale becomes a cat and mouse game between the real-life chicanery of American commerce and the ready fictions concocted by Whitacre to keep his secret agent status intact and cover up his own role around corporate pot. Backed with a jazzy score courtesy of Marvin Hamlisch, 'The Informant!' mixes humour and pathos in equal measure as the full extent of one fibbing executive causes widespread corporate panic. Undoubtedly, Soderbergh and screenwriter Burns have stretched certain moments for maximum dramatic effect, but always maintaining full audience attention on exactly how this jumbled ball of wax will eventually unravel. In a cast that includes Rusty Schwimmer, Rick Overton and Melanie Lynskey, Damon commands the screen with his unerring mixture of juvenile glee at secret dealings and adult inclination to concealed misdeeds. An actor currently at the top of his game in everything from action man Bourne to bit player guest on 'Will And Grace', his subtlety in this outing will add another notch to his career highs. A winner.