The newest movie from director Steven Soderbergh, The Informant, was released this week, and due to no one showing up for a screening of Whiteout, I was able to check this movie out a day early.  So just a little back story on my history of Steven Soderbergh and his films. I own all of the Oceans movies, but I have only seen the first two. I enjoyed the first one, second one was ok, still need to check out the third. But the last movie of his that I saw before this was The Girlfiend Experience, which I enjoyed a lot (it’s in my top ten movies of the year). So I went into this movie, somewhat excited to check this out.

This review may contain minor spoilers, so be warned.

So the movie stars Matt Damon and a host of other cameos throughout the movie. The story is based on a book, which is based on a true story, which is based, oops, too many based ons. Anyway the story deals with the story of a employee of ADM, an agricultural company that seems to have their hands in the pretty much anything dealing with corn and it’s by-products. And as they title states, something comes up after a possible mole in the company is working with a Japanese compeitor, and he soon works with the FBI as they try and take down the mole. This leads into a much bigger case for the FBI, as price fixing and many other white collar crimes are discovered. He then spends the next few years working with FBI agents, played by Scott Bakula and Joel McHale, as they try and take down the ADM corporation and expose all of it’s wrong doings. This is the basic story of the movie, and if you have seen the trailer, you know that he is not a very good informant, he seems to be way over his head, and is not subtle in his ways of being a corporate spy (being a little too discriptive while he is secretly taping his day at work). At the begining of this movie you feel for him and by the end of the movie, that feeling goes away. Within about a half hour into the movie, I caught on to something that gets revealed later, and from that point on, I didn’t really care what was going on. Another thing that stood out to me, was the constant inner dialogue throughout the movie, there were times where he would be in a conversation with someone and then all of sudden, his inner dialogue (which mostly consists of useless facts and trivia), would make it so you can’t understand the conversation between the two of them. You feel as if you may be missing something important. Also, this movie takes place in Illinois in the early 90’s, but the music and titles, make it seem like it is set in the 70’s. I know I am sure you could think of many jokes to explain this, but for me, I felt it was distracting.

Now for the good, there was a few things that I did like about this movie, and this was one of the things I really enjoyed about The Girlfriend Experience, and that was the cinematography. The colors are bright and framing of the scenes was amazing. I believe this was shot with his red digital camera, and I have to say I love the look, more people need to use this camera, but if they do, it may lose it’s affect on me. The score was another highlight for me, it was a nice mix of spy and circus music, yes you read that right. It helps set the mood of our main character, he’s a wanna be spy, who really acts like he should be in a circus at some points.

So there ya go, some good and some bad things about this movie. Overall I would have to say I was rather disappointed in the movie. I was expecting more, but all I got was a movie that I really wasn’t surprised by anything that happened. It’s been getting rave reviews, so it may be something you may wanna check out, if you were interested in seeing anyways.

Offical IMDB page:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130080/

Well I am going to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in 3D and Jennifer’s Body on Sunday night, so those should be the next few films that I will review.

I would like to add one more thing, you need to see the trailer for the new movie Up in the Air. I first heard this trailer on the /film podcast and I finally got to see it at work the other night. It’s a great trailer for the simple reason that the speech that he gives is amazing, so here is a link for you to check it out yourself. Enjoy!

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/09/09/exclusive-up-in-the-air-teaser-trailer/

So that is all, and until next time..go out and see a movie

Sean