Matt Damon’s Weirdest Role (And Movie) Deserves More Love
By Ted Pillow
Lots of people didn’t like Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!
“Is it a slight drama or a black comedy?” they wondered.
“And why is the main character such an idiot? Or is he actually some kind of warped genius? Are we supposed to like him? And what’s with the campy, 60s kitsch soundtrack?”
I understand those complaints. But I have an incredible admiration for Soderbergh’s elusive film, which alters its tone more abruptly than a Formula One racer changing gears.
The Informant! is as delightfully unpredictable as its main character, Mark Whitacre (spectacularly played by Matt Damon). Whitacre is an enigmatic cipher, sometimes appearing as a guileless moron and other times as a manipulative, compulsive liar.
Despite the seemingly ironic stance employed by Soderbergh and Damon (i.e., the title’s exclamation point), both find a genuine pathos in the character, with results that are unexpectedly stirring.
I also loved Soderbergh’s inspired choice to cast comedians and comedic actors—Joel McHale, Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins, Tom Papa, Tony Hale—in no-frills, straight-man roles.
Perhaps this professional film critic can convince you:
For all the silly walks and comic cameos, anger fuels The Informant!, giving it its pulse and reason for being. Anger inspires its giggles, forces its tears and might even explain the fiery orange that colors so many faces, as if this world and its people were on the verge of immolation. Like all of Mr. Soderbergh’s movies, this one can be appreciated on purely formal terms, for the clarity of its images and the economy of the storytelling. But it is Mr. Soderbergh’s insistence on seeing the A.D.M. scandal as a collective tragedy rather than as another white-collar crime that gives the movie force, resonance, feeling. In the face of such corruption perhaps only laughter will do: after all, for a while now the joke has most definitely been on us. —Manohla Dargis, New York Times
If you haven’t seen The Informant! yet, you can stream it on Amazon Video.
