The Informant! is the winkingly cynical, fact-based story of Mark Whitacre, the high-ranking manager of a lysine manufacturing plant who in the early ‘90s blew the whistle on his own company at the behest of the FBI. (The crime? Price fixing.) We are given several clues early on that Whiteacre (a paunchy, bespectacled, nerded-up Matt Damon) is shifty, unreliable, and not to be trusted, and Scott Z. Burns’s screenplay keeps us ignorant of his true character until the very last, where he is finally revealed to be (spoiler ahoy) just as guilty as the bigwigs he’s purportedly trying to take down. Directed by Steven Soderbergh in the loosey-goosey manner that is uniquely his own, the film is sarcastic and undramatic, as evidenced by the mocking, tweeting Marvin Hamlisch score and the melted cheddar cheese image. What impresses most is the director’s deft juggling of a fine stable of character actors including Tom Wilson, Clancy Brown, and, most delightfully of all, Scott Bakula.
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