#THE INFORMANT MOVIE#
#THE INFORMANT CODE#

#THE INFORMANT MOVIE#

in ADM history, who pulled off - well, what happens in this movie - and who, in the aftermath, went on to earn a pair of law degrees, among other things. Macy, but with an extra spark of charisma and intelligence, which makes sense for a PhD who became the youngest V.P. With thirty extra pounds, an unglamorous moustache and an embarrassing hairpiece, Damon is a comedic natural as the sort of compromised schlub often played by William H.

#THE INFORMANT CODE#

On the other hand, who wants to give up $27 trays of 50 jumbo shrimp at Costco? Bring on the corn.Īlthough Whitacre jokingly assigns himself the code name “0014” because he’s “twice as smart as 007,” the character is light-years removed from a superspy - which, of course, is the point for Damon, coming off the Jason Bourne trilogy. Still, there is a moment when Whitacre comes face to face with a plate of puffy jumbo shrimp, and the whole premise of putting corn in everything is more than enough to give you pause, with or without criminal profiteering. It’s part Erin Brokovich or The Insider big-business malfeasance and whistleblowing, part breezy Catch Me if You Can or Burn After Reading caper comedy, with a bouncy score by Marvin Hamlisch and 1960s-esque title captions. It’s better to let the tale unspool on the screen like a multi-course meal at an unfamiliar restaurant.Īll I will say is that, from the corn thing, The Informant! descends into a complex web of international corporate crime, whistle-blowing and a lengthy, covert federal investigation. “Corn goes in one end,” Marc Whitacre (Matt Damon) confides in an inner monologue voiceover as he walks the office floors of Archer Daniels Midland, “and profit comes out the other.” Whitacre was a divisional president at ADM in charge of bio-research in the early 1990s, and if you haven’t read Kurt Eichenwald’s The Informant: A True Story, on which the film is based, and don’t otherwise know Whitacre’s story, don’t Google him if you’re planning on seeing the film (and watch out for reviews, many of which reveal too much). Chicken? Feed them lysine, an amino acid derived from corn, and they go to market in six months instead of eight. Trash bags? Corn starch makes them biodegradable.

Maple syrup and orange juice? Corn syrup.

What do all these things have in common? Corn.

The informant