Matt Damon & Scott Bakula

There's a scene in the deliciously deadpan new Steven Soderbergh comedy "The Informant!" where corporate whistle-blower Mark Whitacre, a rising star at Archer Daniels Midland Co., spills his guts in a courtroom, pleading his essential -- if not legal -- innocence.

In a drama, such a scene would come from the heart and aim for the gut.

Here, though, we're in the company of a very slippery fish, and the scene strikes the tone of an Oscar acceptance speech delivered by a man who didn't actually win the award.

Matt Damon, beefed up and grinning underneath a fake mustache and rug, is wonderful as Whitacre, a Decatur, Ill., family man trained as a biochemist.

More than any previous screen role, this one affords Damon a chance to work his sly comic chops.

In Soderbergh's three "Ocean's" films, Damon played Robin to George Clooney's and Brad Pitt's Batman. "The Informant!" (complete with ironic exclamation point) showcases Damon as a related sort of naif, a corn- and soybean-fed executive, gabby and glad-handing. He seems honest. But he's a complicated fellow or, rather, a complex series of facades.

Product warning: Do not expect the wild farce promised by the ad campaign.

Based on Kurt Eichenwald's exhaustive nonfiction chronicle, the film is both outlandish and subtle. It begins conventionally enough, as Whitacre informs his ADM bosses that the company's Japanese rivals are engaging in corporate sabotage, mucking up their production of a food additive known as Lysine. The Feds are brought in to investigate, and pretty soon an eager Whitacre is wearing a wire, with the intention of getting evidence of price-fixing from the Japanese competitors. Scott Bakula and Joel McHale, in nicely contrasting modes of slow-burn exasperation, play FBI agents trying to figure out if Whitacre's memory lapses and inconsistencies point to mere trouble or a larger, more humiliating realm of disaster.

Soderbergh shot the film on crisp, honey-hued high-definition digital video, set largely in generic Midwestern office spaces. Damon's voice and demeanor are just right, and the actor -- who really is an actor, a good one -- works out Whitacre's particularities like a character man stepping up to a leading role, rather than a movie star, slumming.

I have no idea how large an audience "The Informant!" is destined to attract. But that's one of its pleasures; it doesn't have a suck-up, how'm-I-doin'? air. It lets Mark Whitacre take care of that department.

 

"The Informant" Movie Trailer

What was Mark Whitacre thinking? A rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Whitacre (Matt Damon) suddenly turns whistleblower. Even as he exposes his companys multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI, Whitacre envisions himself being hailed as a hero of the common man and handed a promotion. But before all that can happen, the FBI needs evidence, so Whitacre eagerly agrees to wear a wire and carry a hidden tape recorder in his briefcase, imagining himself as a kind of de facto secret agent. Unfortunately for the FBI, their lead witness hasnt been quite so forthcoming about helping himself to the corporate coffers. Whitacres ever-changing account frustrates the agents (Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) and threatens the case against ADM as it becomes almost impossible to decipher what is real and what is the product of Whitacres active imagination.

 

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MPAA rating: R (for language).

Running time: 1:48.

Starring: Matt Damon (Mark Whitacre); Scott Bakula (Agent Shepard); Joel McHale (Agent Herndon); Melanie Lynskey (Ginger Whitacre).

Directed by Steven Soderbergh; written by Scott Z. Burns, based on the book "The Informant (A True Story)" by Kurt Eichenwald; produced by Gregory Jacobs, Jennifer Fox, Michael Jaffe, Howard Braunstein and Kurt Eichenwald. A Warner Bros. Pictures release.

 

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