September 29, 2009 -- “The Informant!” is a curious film. It refuses to take sides. Like a Kubrick film, it examines people dispassionately, as a scientist looking at an insect. For your entertainment, the man on the microscope slide is one Mark Whitacre (played by Matt Damon of the “Bourne” series of films). His puzzling personality is revealed, one layer at a time, onion-like over the course of the film. To say he is not what he at first seems to be is like saying the Grand Canyon is big.

Whitacre is a bright, personable executive at Archer Daniels Midland Company, a giant corporation in the food and chemical industry. Caught in a lie during an FBI investigation into a blackmail scheme, Whitacre agrees to become an FBI informant into a global price-fixing conspiracy. At first, he seems like the perfect informant. He is genial and cooperative. He wears a wire and records hundreds of hours of conversations which incriminated ADM executives in the 1990s. The film is based on a true story.

As the story goes along, the FBI begins to notice inconsistencies in the stories that Whitacre is telling them. After arrests are made, lawyers working for ADM find out some shocking facts about Whitacre's record at ADM. The revelations threaten to undermine the FBI's case against ADM. The FBI decides to go after Whitacre himself when it becomes clear he has engaged in criminal conduct. ADM officials hope to take the heat off themselves and put it all on Whitacre. That doesn't work entirely. Some ADM officials end up spending time in prison, thanks to Whitacre's recordings.

Although Whitacre is a bright fellow, a biochemist by trade, the FBI finds out that he is also naive, putting too much trust in some friends. He also falls prey to one of the best-known confidence schemes around, an advance-fee fraud, also known as a 419 fraud. One example of this kind of fraud is the Nigerian bank scam. Even though he betrays the confidence of his fellow ADM executives and costs the company a lot of money, Whitacre somehow holds on to this belief that someday he will emerge as the president of the company.

The film keeps focus on the roller coaster ride that is Whitacre's life during the years he was an FBI informant, and the improbable string of revelations about his record at ADM. Despite all the revelations, it never really seems that you get to the heart of the onion that is Mark Whitacre. Is he as smart as he seems to be, or is he as dumb as he seems to be? One thing's for sure, nobody knows what this guy is going to pull next. In real life Whitacre is out of prison, is a company executive again and is working on clearing his criminal record by getting a pardon. Among those supporting Whitacre in his push towards a pardon is the retired FBI agent who headed up the ADM investigation and former White House chief counsel Chuck Colson. That is even stranger than the movie. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2009 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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