- This movie is more tragicomedy than straight comedy. It’s funny, but as the story unravels and you realise Mark is a compulsive liar coming up with layer upon layer of lies to implicate everyone else while attempting to exonerate himself several times over, it becomes a rather sad story of someone with an obvious mental illness that has gone undiagnosed up until that point. It’s hard to laugh at Mark’s wacky antics knowing that he’s actually a pretty sick man.
- Matt Damon really nailed the early 1990s fat cat business man with the awful haircut, douchey moustache, and dad gut hanging out over his waistband. I loved how upbeat he was about everything and how harshly he drew moral lines and was able to twist his situations so that no matter what, he was the good guy. I know some people like that. They’re awful.
- The inner monologues Mark narrated over other scenes were probably the funniest parts of the movie. They were inane and trivial and revelatory and spectacularly hilarious. I felt a kinship with Mark when he was thinking about businessmen in Tokyo who buy pre-worn girls’ underwear from vending machines and said “How is that okay? THAT IS NOT OKAY!” I agree, Mark, that is not okay. As a side note, I’ve considered making a “this is not okay” tag in order to track how often I say that in my reviews, mostly because I like keeping track of things like this.
- The score was pretty great with its cheesy secret agent vibe.
- I think I prefer Steven Soderbergh as a director of comedies than as a director of dramas.
- The exclamation mark in the title is one of my favourite things about the movie. I feel like it totally exemplifies Mark’s exuberant enthusiasm for helping the FBI, for lying, for being undercover… for just about everything, really.
- I’m also weirdly in love with Joel McHale in this, who I mistook for the guy who played Floyd on 30 Rock in the trailers.
- I do not understand the font choice for all the credits and titles in the movie. The film takes place from 1992-2002 but they’re using this really bad pseudo-1960s psychedelic poster font. That is not okay.
- The poster for this is really great, too, one of my favourite this year:
Like with the exclamation mark in the title, I feel like everything about this poster really showcases his expression of being in awe of his own brilliance. I just love it. In Googling that poster, I also found this one, but I don’t like it as much because it’s more Hitchcock / Burn After Reading than seems necessary.
The Informant!
I don’t feel disappointed by the rather misleading trailer, so that’s a plus.
IMDB Plot Synopsis The U.S. government decides to go after an agri-business giant with a price-fixing accusation, based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president turned informant Mark Whitacre.
