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| Tim Skirvin... |
 Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 11:31 pm |
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I still feel a little bit disappointed in myself for not seeing
_The Informant!_ when I was recently visiting Illinois. I grew up about an
hour down the road from Decatur, where the movie takes place; and while ADM
was less of an odd, evil fixture in our lives than for those down the road,
it still had an impact. But rather than driving an hour out of my way to
see it, I waited until I was back home in California. But the Illinois feel
was certainly still there.
_The Informant!_ tells the story of Mark Whitacre, an executive at
Archer Daniels Midland, and his role in an FBI investigation into a
price-fixing scandal in the mid-1990s. It's hard to argue that the
background isn't boring; such white-collar crime rarely fails to inspire
yawns in those that hear about it, even when the stakes are as high as they
were here. But the movie solves that problem by spending its time focusing
on Whitacre himself, from his background to his eccentricities. It's not
that the case is so interesting; it's that Whitacre is so *weird*.
The movie is played for laughs, albeit extremely dark ones.
Whitacre (Matt Damon) narrates many scenes with a series of random
monologues that almost relate to what's going on, but mostly just share
some of his state of mind. While these monologues distract from what's
actually happening on screen, this actually *improves* the movie; this
intentional misdirection lets us spot incongruities and not worry about
them very much, only to realize later that some of those would have given
the story away. I like that kind of thing.
The movie's true humor came in two pieces: the expressions on
various people's faces as they try to comprehend what Whitacre was saying
to them, and the musical choices during the various high-tension scenes. I
certainly guffawed through much of the movie, in that way that makes me
wonder if I'm the only one in the room doing so. That's worth something.
My biggest gripe with the movie was that the license plates were
off - they were using modern Illinois plates on all of the cars, going back
to 1992. Yes, this is nit-picky; but since they were otherwise trying to
play up the period-ness of the sets, it was a bit glaring to me to see that
detail. Still, that hardly detracted from seeing a car going down the
corn-lined roads of my childhood.
I can see why this movie got mixed reviews, but count me on the
"amused" side of the line. It's smart, funny, and just a tad random.
Recommended.
***
- Tim Skirvin (tskirvin at (no spam) killfile.org)
--
http://wiki.killfile.org/ Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
http://wiki.killfile.org/reviews/movies Skirv's Movie Reviews |
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