Movie Review: THE INFORMANT! (2009) – Matt Damon Is Sadly Hilarious
What a crazy ass lead character! Steven Sondheim is known for his quirky movies, but THE INFORMANT takes the cake.
The best part about the INFORMER, is that Damon’s character, Mark, ends up being a completely quirky, neurotic and fucked up person. He’s a nice guy mind you, but from the style of narration in the film, you can tell there’s something off. This starts of as being supremely hilarious, however, turns dark near the end, only to redeem itself with it’s comedic grace by the end credits.
Rating: 3 Out Of 5
Damon’s Mark is a simple minded fool. His secret investigations with the FBI are ultimately revealed to certain ‘friends’ only because he didn’t want to scare them when the FBI finally raids the company. Through out the film, Mark gets distracted from what’s happening in the scene by things he’s thinking about randomly. Ants swarming around a piece of candy, causes him to appreciate how gracious those ants must be, and that their reaction to it is the greatest thing possible.
It’s seriously messed up. Especially in the later half of the film, when we realize that Mark is a helluva lot more fucked and complicated than we had previously imagined. And it’s constantly funny as hell how his constant lies just keep on building, even to the last frame of the film.
Damon RULES this film with his weird and strange off the wall antics. Scott Bakula is awesome as the FBI Agent completely befundled by Mark’s fucked up ways. Joel McHale is also in this movie, as Bakula’s FBI partner. Not really sure why he’s in here as he doesn’t really do much of his patented comedy. He’s just kind of a nag.
THE INFORMANT is a prime example of the dark comedies that I keep mentioning on this Blog. It’s funny when it shouldn’t be. The entire supporting characters are ever so serious in a situation that may involve jail time for the lead character himself, however his view of reality is so skewed, that he expects to run the company that he’s helping to bring down after the dust is settled. You can’t help BUT laugh and that kind of naivety.
THE INFORMANT is a great comedy. It works on many levels, but mostly for the fact that it doesn’t treat itself as a comedy. There’s no slap stick, there’s no jokes…. there’s just one out of this world character that is SO neurotic that he drives the entire movie and causes us to laugh at him, even when his life crumbles around him.
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