Adapted by Scott Z. Burns and based on Kurt Eichenwald's book "The Informant," Steven Soderbergh cranks out another film for Warners starring Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, a dubious corporate exec turned whistleblower, apparently the highest level whistleblower in known U.S. corporate history. 

As a biochemist brought into the business side of things at agricultural conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), he gets tied up in a mysterious extortion plot which leads the ADM higher ups to bring in the FBI.  When that investigation is just about to run its course, Whitacre becomes an incredibly motivated yet reluctant whistleblower as he exposes to his assigned FBI agent, Brian Shepard, played by Scott Bakula, ADM's international price fixing scheme that literally affects almost every consumer of corn in the world.

As the extortion case winds down, the price fixing case expands and Whitacre finds himself blowing it up bigger and bigger, all the while hiding his true and initial motivation for his actions, from the FBI, his ADM execs, his wife and himself. 

Damon plays the complex Whitacre incredibly well as the whistleblower keeps making enormously stupid mistakes, moronically digging himself into a hole every chance he gets while at the same time ingeniously digging himself out.  He plays his bosses and later the FBI so intelligently we wonder how he ever fell victim to his own stupidity.  Damon pulls off the complex role with a brilliantly believable performance under incredible circumstances.

He plays the comedic role straight to great effect, the hilarity coming from our frustration at his foolish attempts to keep saving himself, rooting for him every time he actually does.  The film is populated with several comedians as straight men, Tom Wilson, Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt, Tom Papa and the Smothers Brothers!  They all support the Whitacre character and his storyline, which ends up being a match made in heaven between acting and writing.

Soderbergh does some great location work here, economically showing us many of the true locations where this story unfolded in real life.  Shooting this film with the RED Camera, it's a major RED Camera endorsement, successfully erasing the line between the look of film and the look of video. 
 

CraveOnline Rating: 8/10

Rated R.  108 minutes.  From Warner Bros. Pictures, Participant Media and Groundswell Productions, a Section Eight-Jaffe/Braunstein Enterprise.  Based on Kurt Eichenwald's book "The Informant," adapted by Scott Z. Burns and directed by Steven Soderbergh.  Music by Marvin Hamlisch.  Photographed by Peter Andrews (Soderbergh!), edited by Stephen Mirrione.  MPAA# 44918