// you’re reading...

Reviews

The Informant! Blu-ray Disc Review

THE INFORMANT! (2009, Blu-ray released February 23, 2010 – MSRP $35.99)

The Informant! Blu-ray DiscThe Informant! isn’t your everyday, run of the mill whistle-blower film. Oh no. Director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Burns have crafted a masterful, dark comedy from the real-life drama surrounding an insiders attempt to bring down big-business Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and the ensuing fallout of the investigations and trials. No, really, it’s a comedy. It’s funny! That’s why there’s an exclamation mark!

That exclamation mark in the title and the happy, bright orange cover of the Blu-ray tell you all you need to know going in to The Informant!. Yes, it’s based on a true story where money was lost, people were hurt and eventually went to jail. But the way that Soderbergh and Burns handle the material borders on absurdist cinema. A doughy, mustachioed Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a former biochemist turned office monkey who disapproves of his companies underhanded dealings and goes to great lengths, over a 3 year period, to provide the F.B.I. with all the secret documents and tapes they need to bring those deals to light. In the process of the investigation, new facts about Whitacre himself begin to surface and the whole story takes a bizarre turn which throws his merit as an informant into question.

Damon is simply wonderful in this multi-layered, textured performance of a disturbed man who is, himself, something of a chameleon. His “unreliable” narration wanders with his train of thought and provides the perfect stylistic touchstone for us to understand that, while the story may be based in real events, the film is following a narrative track that’s at the mercy of an unstable mind. It’s visually stylish, with fantastic performances and a killer score by Marvin Hamlisch. As much as I loved Che, I have to say that I think The Informant! is Soderbergh’s strongest work yet!

Shot digitally on the HD RED camera, The Informant! looks pretty great on Blu. It’s a warm, rich image that occasionally suffers from aliasing and black crush. But don’t judge it too harshly as those and other perceptible imperfections are most likely attributable to the nature of the shots themselves and not the transfer. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track is modest and intentionally flat, outside of the crisp, dynamic score.

And speaking of modest, the special features on The Informant! Blu-ray are far from plentiful, but worth your attention! I found the Soderbergh and Burns’ commentary to be riveting, packed full of wonderful technical information about the shoot, production anecdotes and details about Kurt Eichenwald‘s original book and its subject and their adaptation to film. The disc also includes four pretty great deleted scenes.

Recommended!

Related posts

Discussion

No comments for “The Informant! Blu-ray Disc Review”

Post a comment

Recent Comments