The Informant!

Corporate espionage meets comic mugging in Steven Soderbergh's smarmy biopic The Informant!, an exclamation marked, partially fictionalized tale of bipolar whistleblower Mark Whitacre. Matt Damon packs on the pounds and buries his face underneath a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and a goofy moustache to play the titular hero of the tale, who decides to become an FBI informant when he supposedly uncovers a price fixing scheme at the corn-processing corporation that employs him.

At first, Damon is deliriously delightful in the role, making Mark a curious creation who is defined by his pudgy white-collar narcissism. Mark routinely narrates the movie with a nonsensical series of thoughts that have nothing to do with the story and the addition of this silliness feels right at home in Soderbergh's quirky world. Mark continually blabs on and on about such seemingly disparate topics as poisonous butterflies and Michael Crichton novels. He's a walking encyclopedia filled with random facts and observations and he's eager to share the entirety of his internal monologue.

For a little while, The Informant! manages to get by on the charm of Mark's strange voice-over, so expertly delivered by Damon. Mark's thoughts operate like a light bulb, brightening the movie whenever they populate the tangled narrative. But as the movie progresses, it becomes clear that Soderbergh's meandering little movie has no other strengths beyond Mark's ramblings. So when Mark begins to run out of things to say and The Informant! turns its attention to a nearly endless series of repetitive plot twists, the movie falls flat and wanders aimlessly to its foregone conclusion.

Anyone interested in defending this wet noodle of a narrative can quickly point out that it is indeed based on a true story and so the plot twists are simply following the path of reality, but since Soderbergh makes sure to include a snarky disclaimer at the beginning that warns of fictionalized elements, the argument does not carry much weight. When it comes to wacky silliness, Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns have no trouble stretching the truth, but when it comes to wrapping up the story in a pile of legal scenes, they remain committed to the standard biopic formula with slavish devotion.

Damon is joined by a decent supporting cast, all of whom deserve a better script and sharper direction. Scott Bakula plays Brian (Mark considers calling him Bri at one point), the FBI agent tasked to spearhead the price fixing investigation. Melanie Lynskey appears as Mark's trusting wife Ginger, who bravely stands by her husband, even as his intentions grow increasingly questionable. The blame for this flailing fiasco has little to do with the cast and a lot to do with Burns' half-baked script and Soderbergh's aimless direction.

The Informant! begins as a promising comedy and a potentially unique approach to biopic cinema, but it doesn't take long before it abandons its imaginative eccentricities in favour of a dull narrative that awkwardly stumbles toward the finish line. Eventually, Mark's humorous ramblings about nonsensical stuff like the benefits of flossing your teeth in the shower are nearly forgotten and the desire to ramble is instead adopted by the increasingly uninteresting plot. Like its pseudo-protagonist, The Informant! doesn't know when to shut up. It just keeps droning on until it runs out of story. By the end of it all, the movie's early promises of something funny and engaging are long gone, hopelessly replaced by the lifeless ponderings of meaningless tedium.