Story, Synopsis, Trivia, Dialogues for The Informant! (2009)
The Informant! : Cast: Matt Damon, Lucas McHugh Carroll , Eddie Jemison & others; Dir: Steven Soderbergh; Review: Great performance by Matt Damon as the almost goofy corporate whistle-blower who turns out to be not so honest himself. A quietly funny satire with an original story! Worth a watch!
The Informant! is about Mark Whitacre (Damon), a rising star at Decatur, Illinois based Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the early 1990s who wound up blowing the whistle on the company’s price-fixing tactics, only after his wife forced him to. Matt Damon portrays the bipolar whistleblower dubbed "The wacky little brother of Erin Brockovich".In the film, Whitacre displays bizarre behavior including recklessness and grandiosity.
One night in early November 1992, the high-ranking ADM executive confessed to FBI agent Brian Shepard (Bakula), present only to install a wire tap on Whitacre's phone, that ADM executives—including Whitacre himself—had routinely met with competitors to fix the price of lysine, an additive used in the commercial livestock industry. As the highest-ranked executive to ever turn whistleblower in US history, Whitacre secretly gathered hundreds of hours of video and audio over several years to present to the FBI. He assisted in gathering evidence by clandestinely taping the company’s activity in business meetings at various locations around the globe such as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong, eventually collecting enough evidence of collaboration and conspiracy to warrant a raid.
Whitacre’s good deed dovetails with his own major infractions and struggle with bipolar disorder. The film focuses on Whitacre's meltdown resulting from the pressures of wearing a wire and organizing surveillance for the FBI for three years, instigated by Whitacre's reaction, in increasingly manic overlays, to various trivial magazine articles he reads. In a stunning turn of events immediately following the covert portion of the case, headlines around the world reported that the whistleblower defrauded $9 million from his own company at the same period of time he was secretly working for the FBI and taping his co-workers, while simultaneously hoping to be elected as CEO following the arrest and conviction of the remaining upper management members. After being confronted with evidence of his fraud, Whitacre's claims in his defense begin to spiral out of control, including an accusation of assault and battery against Agent Shepard. Because of this major infraction and Whitacre’s bizarre behavior, he was sentenced to a prison term three times longer than the white-collar criminals he helped to nab.Agent Herndon (Joel McHale) visits Whitacre while in prison in order to support him for a presidential pardon.
What was Mark Whitacre thinking? A rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Whitacre (Matt Damon) suddenly turns whistleblower. Even as he exposes his company's multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI, Whitacre envisions himself being hailed as a hero of the common man and handed a promotion. But before all that can happen, the FBI needs evidence, so Whitacre eagerly agrees to wear a wire and carry a hidden tape recorder in his briefcase, imagining himself as a kind of de facto secret agent.
Unfortunately for the FBI, their lead witness hasn't been quite so forthcoming about helping himself to the corporate coffers. Whitacre's ever-changing account frustrates the agents (Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) and threatens the case against ADM as it becomes almost impossible to decipher what is real and what is the product of Whitacre's active imagination.
Based on the true story of the highest-ranking corporate whistleblower in U.S. history.
