What was he thinking?
That is the main question that Director Steven Soderberg and Actor Matt Damon try to tackle, as they take on the most bizarre case of corporate whistle blowing in American history. The Informant! is technically a biopic, but since the story is so very odd, it comes off as a comedy. Not because it is necessarily trying to be one but because the facts are so outlandish and the main character is so wacky that it leaves the viewer bewildered and baffled to the point where they simply have to laugh.
Try to stay with me here. There’s this guy named Mark Whitacre. He was orphaned at age 3 when he was in a car accident. A wealthy man in Ohio who ran amusement parks adopted him. He got a lucky break there. He met his wife in 8th grade marching band, they’ve been together ever since. He went to an Ivy League School and got a PHD in Biochemistry. He was hired by ADM, a processing conglomerate that manufactures corn into every single thing in the supermarket (check your labels: high fructose corn syrup, lycene, glucenate, etc.) He was promoted into the business end of things and made $350,000 a year as a vice president. It was at that point that he decided to become a whistleblower for the FBI. The FBI didn’t come to him. He went to the FBI. He admitted a price-fixing scheme that ADM was in on with their international competitors (“Just watch, in a couple months a can of soda (aka corn) will be 5 cents more”). He eagerly wore wires and planted cameras. In the end he would become the highest-ranking whistleblower in American History. At this point this story would seem like a drama like ‘The Insider.’ But the story is just getting started.
Mark Whitacre while cooperating with the FBI that he invited into his company had been embezzling millions of dollars through various forgeries and shell companies. And that’s only a fraction of what he was lying about. The second half of the movie consists of Matt Damon lying to ADM, lying to the FBI, lying to his own lawyers, and probably most significantly lying to the press. Layer after unbelievable layer is pulled off and we are left wondering what kind of person would do this. How could somebody so smart be so stupid? In the end Mark Whitacre managed to get three times the jail sentence (9 years) then the other executives at ADM (3 years). The way he got there took a certain kind of brilliance, incredible courage, blinding naivete, and a strange kind of stubborn madness.
The big question of course was: What was Mark Whitacre thinking? Did he really think that he would be promoted to run the company after he had just brought it down? Did he really think the people at the company would hide his embezzling after he had betrayed them? After he is caught red-handed his exasperated lawyer (played by Tony Hale) advises him to take the 3-5 year plea deal. Did Mark Whitacre really think he would win the ensuing trial? At plenty of points in the movie the FBI and Attorney General are left with their mouths agape when they find out what their star informant is doing behind their back. I mean is that even his real hair?
I’m not going to say anymore as much of the story’s pleasure is watching it unfold in front of you. I will just leave you with Mark Whitacre’s own words as he was awaiting the judgment at his trial. “Wow! What a Ride…I would just like to apologize to everybody…I am currently taking medication.”
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