In late 1992, Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), an executive in the BioProducts Division of Archer Daniels Midland, blows the whistle on his bosses and agrees to help the FBI collect evidence in an international price-fixing scheme. But as the investigation drags on into its third year, it becomes clear to both his superiors and the Feds that Whitacre’s white knight-errant act is just that; when the truth finally comes to light, it’s far more complex and bizarre than anyone could possibly have anticipated.

CRITIQUE

At first glance it might seem strange for director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (whose script was adapted from Kurt Eichenwald’s book) to turn the tale of the highest-ranking corporate stool pigeon in American history into an off-the-wall comedy, but this story lends itself to such a treatment.

The tale of Mark Whitacre and his time at ADM is so damned bizarre that even a straight-faced telling (which it received in an installment of NPR’s This American Life [which you can listen to on the NPR website and is well worth it] and as a segment of Discovery Channel’s series Undercover) elicits laughter. Yes, the whole thing is sickening and more than a little sad, but the never-ending twists and turns are so head-spinning they’d be hard to swallow if they were part of a fictional story, and when you realize their relentless onslaught is never going to abate, laughing about it becomes a completely natural reaction. To put it bluntly, this sh*t is seriously f*ucked-up.

For quite a bit of the movie, snippets of narration by Whitacre accompany the action, and the inner workings of the man’s mind help throw what’s already an off-kilter narrative even further off. It’s a very nice touch, as there are times you cannot help but wonder what’s going on inside this man’s head, and the rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness non sequiturs he delivers perfectly complement the movie’s slightly goofy tone.

But there’s a shift in tone during the movie’s second act, with the storytelling becoming more conventional, and I have to admit that I greeted it with a waning interest. There’s a good twenty- or thirty-minute stretch where my mind began to wonder, and I’m hard pressed to remember any of the events of this section of the movie. There’s the James Bond joke and a couple of other gags that were featured in virtually every one of the movie’s trailers and commercials (given just how few laughs there are in this section of the movie, it probably wasn’t a good idea to spoil most of them beforehand), and I know Damon (who’s fantastic) spends a lot of time dodging phone calls from his primary FBI contacts (played here by Scott Bakula and Joel McHale, who are both great), but beyond that I got nothing.

The movie also makes a huge time-jump, skipping ahead roughly eighteen months without any sort of explanation as to why the investigation has stretched on this long or any hint as to what occurred during the missing months. This may be comic take on things, but I like my factual stories to come with some, you know, facts.

But the movie corrects course during the third act; I was about ready to write it off, but then another bizarre twist in the story came into play and I found myself sucked right back in. To reveal what happens here would be criminal, but I will say that is makes what has come before look about as twisty and complex as the plot of Danny and the Dinosaur. You’ll almost need a scorecard to keep up with everything. Like I said, this sh*t is seriously f*cked-up.

Continuing to smart from the fact he wasn’t old enough to make feature films back in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, Soderbergh (who photographed the movie under his Peter Andrews pseudonym) once again attempts to make up for this by supplying The Informant! with a visual asthetic that wouldn’t have out of place back then.

The movie’s title sequence is a dead ringer for something you’d expect to see in a ‘70s crime flick, and the orange- and yellow-tinged color visual scheme (similar to that of Full Frontal or Ocean’s Thirteen, only not as ugly) makes the movie look as if it’s been sitting in a lab for thirty years and was only just recently unearthed. Even some of the wardrobe looks like it was mothballed; Melanie Lynsky, playing Whitacre’s wife Ginger, often looks as if she walked in from an episode of Bewitched, while Bakula looks as if he’s buying his shirts from a decades-old copy of the Sears catalog. This vintage vibe even extends to Marvin Hamlisch’s jazzy, bouncy score, which really shouldn’t work in this context but somehow does. It’s something of an odd package overall, so I guess it’s really no surprise that the more “normal” aspects of the movie are what eventually bring it a down a peg or two.

THE VIDEO

The 1.78:1/1080p transfer--encoded with VC-1 onto a 25GB disc--reflects the intended look of the movie very well, but that intended look means there’s nothing particularly eye-popping about the presentation. As I mentioned, there’s an orange tint to the visuals, and there’s a softness that further enhances the ‘70s influence. The stylization weakens blacks and rubs out some of the finer detail, and blown-out whites are the norm (Soderbergh goes out of his way to frame characters in front of blinding windows); some may find this an eyesore, but it’s clearly what Soderbergh was shooting for.

And now for a plus: Despite being shot with Red One cameras (Soderbergh’s new weapon of choice), the transfer never looks digital; in fact, it wasn’t until I saw the Red One logo during the end credits that I realized the original source was a digital one.

THE AUDIO

Given the up-front sound in the movie’s opening scenes, I initially assumed Soderbergh had taken his usual road and employed a stereo spread for the score and a mono mix for everything else, but there’s actually a bit of surround action in this disc’s Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track. Sure, it amounts to some cricket chirps in one scene and some music bleed in a couple others, but it’s there. But the audio here is really just a vehicle for the dialogue and score, and they sound very good, so why complain?

English, French, and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included; English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

Exclusive to this Blu-ray release is an audio commentary by Steven Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns, which is quite a good track.

You also get four deleted scenes (6 minutes total, HD), which really aren’t much. (I did notice some material that appeared in early trailers for the movie but didn’t make the final cut.)  

Seeing as this is a new Warner Bros. release, some--but not all--copies also contain a second disc that houses both standard-def and digital copies of the movie.

FINAL THOUGHTS

A more even-keeled (relatively speaking) middle act could have nudged The Informant! to a full-on recommendation, but I’m going to take a cue from Whitacre himself, cover my butt and suggest you give this one a rent.