Soderbergh's "The Informant!'

As a film, Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (yes, the exclamation point is actually part of the title, for reasons that will become clear) is a Trojan horse: It seems to be one thing at first, but turns out in fact to be something quite different and unexpected— much like its titular character, Mark Whitacre.

From a casual synopsis, you'd expect another one of those based-on-a-true-story flicks about a brave and idealistic whistleblower crusading against corporate malfeasance, along the lines of The Insider or Erin Brockovich. From the film's TV ads and trailers, you might conclude that The Informant! is an offbeat and self-consciously quirky comedy, sort of Coen Brothers lite. By the final credits, you'll conclude that, yes, The Informant! is both of those things, however odd a combination it may seem.

But you'll also realize that sometime during its 108 minutes, the film veered off along some wild hairpin curves and ultimately turned into a fable about the power and seduction of self-deception and self-importance, misguided ambitions and intentions, severely dysfunctional personalities, and people who inadvertently end up doing bad while trying to do good, and vice versa.

Damon as nerdy biochemist

Matt Damon (playing wholly against his best-known character, the tormented and ruthless amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne) stars as Mark Whitacre, a rather lumpen and nerdy biochemist who's risen through the ranks to become a top executive at the giant agricultural company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the early 1990s. At the urging of his wife, Ginger (Melanie Lynskey), Whitacre confides to FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula, in a wonderfully bewildered performance) that ADM has been conspiring with its competitors to illegally fix the price of lysine, an important livestock food additive.

Whitacre admits that he's been involved in the price-fixing scheme himself, and at first it seems that he's simply trying to save his own neck by agreeing to cooperate with an intrigued Shepard, who enlists Whitacre's aid as a full-fledged informant. Whitacre's true motives, as we'll discover, are far more interesting.

Working with Shepard and Shepard's partner, Robert Herndon (Joe McHale), Whitacre begins secretly (though somewhat ineptly) taping ADM meetings and phone conversations in order to gather evidence for the FBI. But matters begin to take a turn for the surreal when the pressures of Whitacre's undercover role start to derail his already-precarious emotional stability, leading him to see himself as a secret agent carrying out a dangerous mission or as a heroic, self-sacrificing crusader for truth.

Whitacre's overzealous and erratic behavior at times almost threatens to derail the FBI investigation. But justice is eventually served— although not entirely in the way that either Whitacre, his FBI handlers, or federal prosecutors expect.

Farce, satire or serious?

In some ways, The Informant! is a frustrating piece of work because it can't quite decide whether to be farce, satire or a serious character study. It takes a late turn toward the latter. But ultimately, Soderbergh intends above all to keep us discombobulated, which he achieves by unfolding his tale not as a docudrama-type narrative but rather as a sly, playful trip that never lets us settle in and get too comfy along the way.

So the exclamation point in the film's title is both literal and ironic, serving both to signify Whitacre's exaggerated sense of importance and influence, and also to indicate that the movie itself is a mischievous poke at the expectations that we've absorbed from other whistleblower sagas. By stretching and warping those dramatic conventions in The Informant!, Soderbergh also reminds us that, both in movies and in real life, things aren't always what they seem— and that it's always a good idea to take a really close second look at that funny-looking wheeled horse that the Greeks have left at your front gate before you drag it inside your wall.