Sporting a great mustache, Matt Damon plays the titular informant, Mark Whitacre, who ends up serving the FBI as an inside man in their investigation of his company, Archer Daniels Midland. Initially, the FBI is there to check out an employee who is blackmailing them, but Whitacre's wife, Ginger (Melanie Lynskey), pressures him into revealing that ADM is involved in fixing the price of lysine. While the story is based on the price-fixing scandal that led to $100 million fines to ADM, director Steven Soderbergh makes this one wildly entertaining thanks to the hijinks involving Whitacre's "undercover" work, and especially his constant parallel voiceovers.

Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) plays the lead FBI investigator who has to deal with Whitacre's personality. It's hard to say exactly what that personality is as the voiceover does imply that there's a divided man within each of us, and then there's the real-life situation that includes Whitacre being bi-polar! Whitacre's "desire" to put the company on the hotseat,or rather his wife's pressure, allows for him to consider himself the white knight, and the company as the evil villains. It's not really that black and white, but it's part of the irony of this comedy.

In addition to Whitacre's own internal problems, the film paints the FBI as complete morons. They get busted by the phone company for tapping the Whitacres' phone lines, and they seem to work on a limited budget. They're also unable to bust the ADM folks, without the help of a guy who is more than a little off center. But thankfully for them, Whitacre warms to his role as a "good guy," leading the FBI, ADM, and the audience around by the nose. It's a successfully-told story with a fair amount of humor, sarcasm, and more; but you're constantly left wondering which narrator (internal, external, etc.) is the accurate and reliable one.

One of my favorite scenes (or pair of scenes) occurs when some higher-ups in the FBI ask, "Why in the world would Whitacre cooperate with the FBI? What's his agenda?"... and at the same time, he's informing his wife that he thinks he'll be able to run ADM after all of the corrupt higher-ups get removed from their positions. She tells him that it's completely illogical, but Whitacre maintains his beliefs that everything will be fine after for him at ADM even after it gets taken down. It's funny... and pathetic. You have to wonder if the man wasn't completely off his rocker, or if he's just that naive.

I wasn't sure what the big deal was about The Informant!, because it wasn't really my type of movie. But once I got into it, I found it quite intriguing. There were actually two books about the lysine price-fixing scandal, the one on which this movie is based and the other, Rats In The Grain, which paints Whitacre in a more sympathetic light. It's even more intriguing, then, because you have to wonder if Whitacre was manipulative (he appears to be a chronic liar here), ingenious, naive, stupid, brave, or some combination of all of the above.

Whatever you think of Whitacre, Damonplays his conflicted roleto the hilt. It's still mind-boggling to me that Whitacre would get busted even harder than the company. It certainly doesn't offer up a very clear picture of how testimony/cooperation versus your own involvement works. Sure, you can't do whatever you want and then get away with it by throwing someone else under the bus, can you?What can you make of a hero/antihero who lies all the time? I mean, it works for James Bond and a host of other heroes (don't superheroes deceive people about their identity all the time?) but it doesn't work out alright for Damon's character.

In the end, lies and deception don't pay. They are amazingly funny, but the problems persist when the growing pile of lies catches up with him. Whitacre wants to be a good guy but his actionsjust don't match his proposed intentions. They're too agenda-driven, rather than resulting from a desire to do the right thing. Our motives shine through regardless of how we propose our intentions; in the end, the actions of our lives speak louder than words.