Even Matt Damon, an actor who will happily sign photographs of his monosyllabic Team America: World Police puppet or cavort with Sarah Silverman as the punchline to a joke, must have questioned the self-deprecation and pranksterism required for Mark Whitaker, the unreliable hero-narrator of Steven Soderbergh’s dark political comedy The Informant.
During the early ‘90s Mr. Whitaker was a rising corporate star at Decatur, Illinois based Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) when he decided to turn whistleblower on the company’s price-fixing tactics. Sadly, this eccentric biochemist was not averse to dipping his hand in the till. Working from a deft, tricksy screenplay, Matt Damon grants this unlikely protagonist – an odd, corrupt bureaucrat from the corn industry - an unusual charm.
The film is The Insider replayed for laughs but Mr. Damon might have walked off the pages of an O. Henry short story and into an Ocean’s Eleven sequel. A colourful supporting cast – Scott Bakula, Melanie Lynsky, Clancy Brown - rally to their star’s cause. Who knew the corporate machinations behind corn by-products could be such fun?