Mark Whitacre [Matt Damon] is a VP at ADM.  Mark decides to contact the FBI and become an informant for a case against ADM for price-fixing.

I guess this would be an unofficial entry into The Soderbergh Series since it is a film directed by Steven Soderbergh but I had no clue that I would be seeing this during my marathon and I hadn’t planned on reviewing it for this marathon.  It plays very nicely into the idea of Soderbergh taking a staple, the corporate satire, and making it look and feel completely different.  Instead of the broad humour you would find in most films of this nature we are treated to a dark comedy that mostly involves a character study of Mark Whitacre.

My problem with this film is that it focussed so much on this character which I ended up completely hating because he is one of the biggest idiots that you will see this year on the big screen.  He, on top of being a fool, is a compulsive liar and this is possibly the most interesting part of the film since we are not told what he is saying are lies until the third act when he himself becomes the focus of the investigation and the FBI begins to dismantle all of his lies that he has told.  So we are sitting there having our minds blown as we find out a lot of what we thought we knew was not.  I feel almost that I would enjoy this movie a lot more if I were to view it a second time knowing what I know about this character.  Then I would be able to properly understand what is going on with Mark and get the funny in this dark comedy that I didn’t find all that funny the first time around.

I didn’t hate, but at the same time wasn’t very happy with the end product, but I still respect Soderbergh for seeing what he was trying to do and reserve the right to completely change my view on the film with repeat viewings.  Soderbergh was attempting to create this dark character that single-handedly take down a huge corporation for price fixing, but at the same time is a complete idiot.  One thing that bugged me is that at times I would see Mark do something that was very smart for his position, being a spy, and I would question if Mark was pretending to be stupid so that it would be easier for him to fit into the corporation and keep getting the FBI information on the crime, and then a minute later he would do something that would be completely retarded and he could’ve done the smarter thing without blowing his cover therefore confirming that he’s really an idiot.  So how did he manage to figure out how to do the smart thing a minute ago???  I don’t know, and that confuses me.

One aspect that struck me as interesting was the actual cinematography and the musical selections in the movie.  The movie felt almost like a dream due to its overly bright nature.  Since this movie is only based on the truth that Mark Whitacre was a VP and an informant that brought down the company I wonder how stupid he really was in real life.  I’d like to believe that the stupid was added for comedic effect and I’m still not sure as to whether I would’ve preferred to see a straight up serious corporate spy film where Matt Damon reimagines his character from The Good Shepherd for the FBI and corporate America.  The music in the film fit the idea of a comedy but felt so out of place since the movie was not tongue-in-cheek at all.  So I felt quite jarred while watching this, what felt like a, serious story with these songs that pointed to silly comedy and at the same time knowing this was supposed to be funny and I should probably be laughing.  It felt like going to a stand-up show and hearing the comedian pause for laughter and nothing was coming out of the crowd.

I have to recommend this as a rental.  If you watched the trailer for this movie and you’re at all interested wait for it to hit your local rental store and pick up the DVD for a fun weeknight when you’re bored and refuse to go see whatever crap blockbuster is out in the theatre.

IMDB says 7.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 76%

I say 5.0/10