The Informant! Reviews
Top CriticIn the end, it seems as though it's better to aim for searing moments and whiff on greatness than to shoot for the middle and hit it.
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| Original Score: B-
It may come across like a self-satisfied madcap bauble, but that titular exclamation mark is the key that unlocks the myriad subtextual delights of Soderbergh's timely latest.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Damon is an agile comic performer, and Soderbergh knows how to serve him up without losing sight of the ultimate seriousness behind it all.
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| Original Score: B+
Soderbergh is a good listener, too, always alert to the myriad ways his characters reveal, conceal and finally betray themselves in thought, word and deed.
Mark's collection of bizarre behaviors doesn't add up to a character.
Soderbergh has transformed this into a treatise on the incompetence of everyone involved: the informant, the corporation upon which he informs, the lawyers, and the FBI. Strangely enough, it's completely believable.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
I liked the movie quite a bit, but by the end I felt as if I were at a live TV show with a blinking sign ordering me to LAUGH.
It'd be a tragedy if it weren't so richly absurd, but it would also make for better comedy if the joke weren't on us. The Informant! laughs so long and hard that it forgets to check whether we're laughing along.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The Informant! has two aces going for it: Soderbergh's poking at the mazelike holes in American business and Damon's whirling dervish performance.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Few directors other than Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino can make films with the same geek joy -- the same love of cinematic history -- as Steven Soderbergh.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
A bait-and-switch film that promises caper comedy with silly hair and dated-fashion costumes, and ends up with something that's much weirder -- a marshmallow-light corporate satire.
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| Original Score: 3/4
[Damon] occupies his equivocating antihero utterly, capturing the Walter Mittyish self-delusion, the desperate desire to please, and the bottomless conviction that, whatever his transgressions, he's still one of the good guys.
It suggests that in a world gone mad, even the good guys can be a little cracked, and that, in an age of self-indulgence, it might be hard for a whistleblower to heed his own alarms.
| Original Score: 4.5/5
The exclamation point in the title is your first clue that Steven Soderbergh's intentions here are more than a little askew.
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.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
...a strange, strong, tragically funny comedy about all the lies we tell ourselves and others to make it through the wicked world and the working week.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
A smart, cynical movie about how we buy now -- oops, I mean, how we live now.
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| Original Score: 4/5
The Informant! is more amusing than laugh-out-loud hilarious, but is never boring.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Shooting fast and digital in just 30 days, Soderbergh invests the film with the breathless pace of a thriller and the gravity befitting a nation's soul sickness. Damon makes Whitacre recognizably human.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
I enjoyed it, in a momentary-diversion sort of way, without really being sure it was worth doing.
In adapting reporter Kurt Eichenwald's non-fiction account of Mark E. Whitacre, the corporate corn husker turned federal snitch, Soderbergh has given this incredible story exactly the amount of insanity it deserves.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Mr. Damon plays it admirably straight, for the most part, thereby serving as a counterweight to the clamorous self-delight that surrounds him. Unfortunately, that's not enough to save the production...
While this film fits squarely into Soderbergh's recurrent goal of ignoring audience interest when possible, that's the only area in which it can be considered a success.
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| Original Score: 2/5
The film's casting is spot on. Damon is delightful playing someone who is a terrible actor. Wearing a ghastly muffin-shaped hairdo, an ill-advised mustache and 30 extra pounds around his waist, he's hardly recognizable as lethal Jason Bourne.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Despite an appealing central performance from Matt Damon, disguised in a mustache and complicated swoop of hair, The Informant! feels like a jumble of ideas rather than a concerted whole.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Soderbergh takes a deadly serious news story and amplifies and colors it to the point of outrageousness. The results aren't always consistent, but they are undeniably compelling.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The Informant! is too clever by half -- and yet, at the same time, not quite as smart as it thinks.
A whimsical and light-hearted spin on a serious story of corporate whistleblowing.
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| Original Score: 3/4
As Soderbergh lovingly peels away veil after veil of deception, the film develops into an unexpected human comedy. Not that any of the characters are laughing.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Soderbergh, despite three lighthearted Ocean's films, is not a natural comedic director.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
[Damon] -- who has quietly and steadily turned into a great Everyman actor -- is in nimble control as he reveals his character's deep crazies.
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| Original Score: B
If only The Informant! was as giddy as its exclamation-point title, as jaunty as its corporate Muzak soundtrack -- or even as funny as its TV commercials.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
The Informant! is a hoot, an ever-escalating tale of corporate crime, greed and out-and-out craziness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
The Informant! is one of [Soderbergh's] ugliest works, photographed on the RED digital camera system in such a way that depth of field is meaninglessly flattened into backlit brown mush.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
The filmmakers have painted a 1990s story with a 1970s palette, and the tone clashes with the setting, like plaid on paisley.
The Informant! says that people who do good or ill have complex motives for their actions, and that not everyone is knowable, instantly or ever.
The Informant! is a return to form for Soderbergh, who couldn't seem to put anything resembling an emotional charge into his recent films...This time, Soderbergh is in full control, and his star is on fire.
The Informant! does raise a fascinating question: How can humans so compartmentalize their psyches? But Whitacre has no stature -- he's just a nut.
The pic showcases an excellent performance by a chubbed-out Matt Damon as a Midwestern executive who's so smart he's dumb.
A comedy about corporate fraud, malfeasance and a mental disorder that never quite succeeds as a comedy.
