Movie Review:'Informant' proves truth stranger than fiction

If one saw films as diverse as "sex, lies and videotape," "Solaris," "Traffic" and the adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Out of Sight" without credits, that viewer would probably never guess these movies were directed by the same person.

Besides that odd (and successful) lot, director - and sometimes writer, producer, cinematographer and editor - Steven Soderbergh is behind the commercially successful franchise that began with "Ocean's Eleven" and the sprawling biopic of Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara.

Soderbergh is a director who is not locked into one visual style, one mode of storytelling or one approach filmmaking.

His latest, "The Informant!," may seem on the surface close to his other movies. It is based on the true story of a whistleblower, who confronted and triumphed over a large corporation. But "The Informant!" is decidedly different in tone than "Erin Brockovich." From its title - he added the exclamation point to the title of New York Times journalist Kurt Eichenwald's extensive and serious book about Mark Whitacre - to the 1960s-style psychedelic graphics to the intentionally cheesy (and absolutely effective) soundtrack by Marvin Hamlisch, Soderbergh makes some odd choices that could have tripped up a lesser filmmaker.

But Soderbergh takes the work of Eichenwald (who acted as a producer on "The Informant!"), and adds a great deal of decidedly uncomfortable and quirky humor.

The narration, provided by main character Whitacre - played by the goofiest Matt Damon you'll ever see - explains a lot about how a rather nerdy biochemist with a life lavish with lysine, comes to fancy himself as "0014," a secret agent who is twice as talented as James Bond.

Set in the 1990s, Whitacre is the youngest vice president at huge food corporation Archer Daniels Midland Co., one of the biggest companies in the world. It's a safe bet that on any given day, a great deal of what is eaten around the planet has some connection with ADM.

Whitacre's bailiwick is lysine, an essential amino acid that can be synthesized from corn and is mainly used as an animal feed additive. A lysine boost in chicken feed can lessen considerably the time it takes for a hatchling to become a whole fryer. In the gigantic agribusiness world, maturation time is one of the many things that can figure into the all-important bottom line.

Whitacre, whose soundtrack of the mind gets stranger and less lucid as the film progresses, extols the virtues of lysine, high fructose corn syrup and other food additives to everyone from co-workers, to friends, to his kids at the breakfast table.

He takes biochemistry very seriously. But something is missing from his life.

That void is soon filled when an international lysine crisis rears its ugly head. It seems there's a fly in the ointment somewhere and more and more synthesized lysine is being corrupted in the manufacturing process. ADM calls in the FBI to see if there's sabotage afoot and as a matter of course, they talk to Whitacre.

Whitacre is more than willing to help - he increasingly fancies himself a secret agent - but then surprises the FBI by telling them there is a bigger story. ADM and its international competitors are colluding to fix the worldwide market price of lysine.

He convinces the FBI, and the Justice Department is brought in. Whitacre agrees to wear a wire and is willing to bring down anyone and everyone at ADM and the other companies involved.

What viewers know, but the FBI doesn't, is that Whitacre has delusions of other grandeur. He believes that after helping clean house at ADM, he will be the logical choice to take over the company. "I'm the good guy here," he says repeatedly.

Whitacre also is harboring some other dark secrets.

"The Informant!" could have been made as an intense espionage drama, but Soderbergh chose an interesting path to get into the mind and personality of the main character. Whitacre is a piece of work. The fact that Soderbergh chose Damon, fresh from his role in the "Bourne" series of spy thrillers, and writer Scott Z. Burns (who wrote "The Bourne Ultimatum" screenplay) to work on this film is another stroke of (off-kilter) genius.

Whitacre went to jail for a longer term than any of the executives he took down. By film's end, he seems completely unstable and the fact that even his wife doesn't understand many of his motives or actions is disconcerting. But we learn during the end credits (and it's true) he and Mrs. Whitacre are still together, and he is now a top executive at a high-tech company in California.

No one would have bought this story had it been fiction. Lysine? A delusional biochemist who wants to be a double-naught spy? A new job as an executive upon release?

Preposterous!

But truth, as we all know, is stranger than fiction.

"The Informant!" is not only fun but a telling parable that is very timely in this age of blatant corporate greed and big-money companies dealing in the global economy. Soderbergh and crew figured out a way to present the story with a refreshing twist.

Not of lime ... but maybe of lysine.