The Informant! (2009)

After Puneet started watching the Bourne series, and having a discussion with him along the lines of Matt Damon never having made a bad movie, it got me thinking. A few years ago the movie The Informant! came out and I remember not being the slightest bit interested in seeing it. My friends went to see it, but I passed on the opportunity. They told me it was good, not great, just good. They also said it had a few funny moments in it. Their description didn't really sell me on it, so I never saw it. That all changed today as I this seemed like the most likely candidate for a bad movie with Matt Damon. Hit the jump to find out if I was right.


Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a vice president of a company that processes corn into the many by-products that are used in most food production around the world. Mark finds out that his company is conspiring with other similar companies around the world to fix the prices of their products. He contacts the FBI and becomes an informant to catch them in the act of making these deals. Too bad it seems Mr. Whitacre is also a compulsive liar.

The most interesting part of this movie is in the writing. Mark Whitacre is constantly talking throughout the film in voice-over. Not really as a narrator, but it's really just his internal thoughts. They can be about anything at all, and rarely do they have to do with what is going on at the moment, even if he's in the scene being shown. In fact, there's a moment near the end when suddenly his inner thoughts do match up with what's going on, and it had quite an impact on me that he was finally focusing and paying attention to the situation he was in.

Matt Damon does a really good job portraying this character who is really weird and kind of out of it most of the time. He's such an unusual character, especially with those constant voice-overs that just make it seem like he can barely stay focused to anything. His thoughts really spin off into abstract places. Other than that, though, the character is really just this every day regular guy. And to be honest, he's pretty boring. Nothing about his life is interesting, and for a while I figured he had just snapped and was doing all this stuff with the FBI for some kind of amusement. It's not really ever revealed, so I suppose it's up to you to decide his motives in the end.

The fact that there's FBI and corporate spying and this odd ball character running around should really make this film far more enjoyable than it really is. I can't say that I was necessarily "bored". I've been bored by movies in the past, so I know how bad it can get, and this wasn't like that. I will say, though, that I wasn't very entertained. Not much really happened in my eyes. He just keeps revealing more and more of his lies and twists on the truth and just keeps getting himself in deeper. But this "twist" on the story is done at least a dozen times, so after the first couple times, it's not surprising anymore and the whole thing becomes extremely predicable.

I really don't think I'd ever recommend this movie to anyone. I didn't even see where the movie was supposed to be funny. Maybe the fact that he keeps lying is supposed to be funny, or maybe his random thoughts, but it never came across that way to me. At best, it was slightly quirky. So the answer to the question has been found. Matt Damon has been in at least one bad movie, and unfortunately I just spent a few hours of my life today watching it.