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Early in "The Informant!" Ginger Whitacre assures her husband, "You told the truth, Mark, that's all you can do."
It turns out that's all Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) cannot do.
Sure, he lobs in some truthful tidbits, but he zigs, he zags, he embroiders, he omits, he misleads and he spins stories like a master weaver in the Steven Soderbergh comedy based on a remarkable real story.
Whitacre is a biochemist and executive on the climb at the agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland in the early 1990s. He and his family are living in Decatur, Ill., when he becomes ensnared in a case of industrial sabotage worthy of a Michael Crichton novel.
That brings the FBI into his life, and soon, he's sharing with a couple of agents details about illegal price-fixing and working with the feds to bring his employer to justice. Plunged into a world of phone taps, hidden cameras and furtive meetings, Whitacre fancies himself Secret Agent 0014 "because I'm twice as smart as 007."
But investigations by the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice don't play out like a James Bond caper or a Crichton thriller, thanks to the true-life bones of the story told in an exhaustive source book by Kurt Eichenwald.
Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns turns up the volume on Whitacre's inner monologues, here doubling as voiceovers. Anything that pops into his mind, from outlet stores to the feeling of wool on skin to indoor vs. outdoor pools, comes spilling out as entertaining effluvia. And then his interior and exterior voices collide.
The less you know about Whitacre and the movie's outcome, the more you will enjoy the ride. An outstanding Damon, excellent supporting cast (especially Melanie Lynskey as Mark's wife and Scott Bakula and Joel McHale as FBI agents), Soderbergh, Burns and mood-setting composer Marvin Hamlisch take a corn-fed tale and let it ... sizzle and then pop.
