The Informant!

Matt Damon!

As if the trailer for ‘Invictus’ wasn’t too much, actually sitting through ‘The Informant!’ was so much more Matt Damon than I wanted to handle.

What’s Good About It

Any time somebody makes a black comedy, I’m happy to watch. This is pretty warped, but I’m not really sure this is quite black. It’s more of a 70s TV kitsch pastiche of events in the 1990s, made to look more distant than they are. All the same, the film has a lot of laughs in it and there’s never really a dull moment.

The film is also though-provoking about the nature of confidential informants and the kind information they can provide investigations. The film goes into some interesting intellectual space regarding the wiring of the informant in order to get incriminating information. The story gets very complicated and therefore more interesting when we realise that the persona of Mark Whitacre played by Matt Damon is more like an onion, with layers of subterfuge going on – and the layers go on and on. It becomes a running gag that Whitacre has somehow not told the entire truth about things as things gradually, and then rapidly spiral out of control.

The film is also a fine study in bipolar disorder, but one also suspect that the bipolar symptoms are being faked, and that Whitacre in this film is in fact personality disordered like nobody else.

What’s Bad About It

The pacing in this story is a little odd. You never get the feeling there’s any momentum to the story, just a sense in which things get dragged on and on with further bizarre complications. It’s not that I think it’s bad as such, but a sign that maybe the film isn’t working too well. Except I don’t know what I would have cut. All of it is necessary to tell the incredibly intricate mess of a story.

What’s Interesting About It

Lysine

Mike Whitacre

ADM

It’s so strange what a film like this makes you look for. I just want to quote this bit of the ADM entry:

ADM’s receipt of federal agricultural subsidies have come under criticism. According to a 1995 report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, “ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM’s annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM’s corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30.”[12]
In 1994, the New York Times wrote “the Clinton Administration’s policy on emission-reducing renewable fuels — in essence, ethanol made from corn — is little more than a politically inspired gift to farmers and corn processors, especially the Archer Daniels Midland Company”.[13]
ADM’s lobbying and campaign contributions have encouraged the continuation of the United States federal sugar program (of trade barriers and price supports) by Congress, costing US consumers roughly $3 billion a year.[12] ADM also lobbied to create and perpetuate federal ethanol subsidies. Some commentators have concluded that the ADM experience demonstrates the need for campaign finance reform.[12]

There’s more on that page.

Also, the disagreements about just what kind of person Mark Whitacre is/was is interesting. Clearly the film went with the Eichenwald account, but other accounts think otherwise of the man.

James B. Lieber
The other book, Rats In The Grain, by lawyer James B. Lieber, focused more on ADM’s price-fixing trial and painted a much different picture about Whitacre than Eichenwald (Lieber 2000,[page needed]). Lieber portrayed Whitacre as an American hero who was overpowered by ADM’s vast political clout. James Lieber presented abundant evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice often subjugated itself to ADM’s political power and well-connected attorneys in the prosecution of informant Mark Whitacre for fraud and tax evasion.[citation needed] Lieber reported that Whitacre was the highest-level executive ever to turn whistleblower in U.S. history, and that Whitacre never attempted any type of fraud during all of his years of employment prior to ADM (Lieber 2000,[page needed]). Lieber concluded that Whitacre’s criminal activity and bizarre behavior were a direct result of the pressures which were placed on Whitacre by the FBI, and that Whitacre’s manic-depression became more problematic as a result of working undercover for the FBI (Lieber 2000,[page needed]). Lieber also pointed out that the FBI had much information indicating that ADM former Chairman Dwayne Andreas and former President James Randall knew about crimes going on throughout the company. Yet, the FBI was not allowed to question them. Lieber stated that in 1996, “Mr. Dwayne Andreas told The Washington Post he had known about Whitacre’s frauds for three years”. However, Whitacre was only fired and turned to the federal authorities after ADM learned he had been working as a mole for the FBI. If he knew about it for three years, why didn’t he fire Whitacre immediately, asked Lieber? “There were only two logical explanations for Andreas’ behavior: either he did not think the funds were stolen (in other words, they were approved) or he didn’t care,” wrote Lieber (Lieber 2000,[page needed]). Lieber concluded that fraud was widespread and an accepted practice at ADM during the 1990s.[15] ADM has been under new management for several years (Lieber 2000,[page needed]). Based on the fact that other executives committed frauds at ADM [i.e., financial fraud by a former treasurer and also technology thefts by others] and based on the fact that ADM continued to support them, Lieber concluded that ADM would have not turned Whitacre into the authorities if he had not been a mole for the FBI.[14] Furthermore, Lieber posed the question of where will the government obtain the next Mark Whitacre after potential whistleblowers observe how Whitacre was treated ? (Lieber 2000,[page needed])[23] Like Eichenwald, Lieber also concluded that Whitacre’s lengthy prison sentence was excessive and unjust when one takes into account Whitacre’s unprecedented cooperation with a much larger criminal case.[20][24] Lieber stated that Whitacre should not have received any prison sentence in return for his “multiple years of unprecedented cooperation” on a much larger case (Lieber 2000,[page needed]).

There’s more on the Dean Paisley section on that page that is noteworthy.

What’s interesting about these entries is the degree to which the film plays fast and loose with people who are still alive. The film kicks off with a caveat saying that it manipulates facts to tell a good story, but just how much they play fast and loose become apparent after you walk out the cinema and check out wikipedia.

My own feelings about it pertaining to this film are that maybe it was made too soon after the events when we are yet to weigh up the relative values and merits of all these things – which in turn adds to the confusion in the film. Maybe it’s a film we’re going to understand in 10years’ time more than today.