The Informant

Matt Damon blows the whistle on his company in "The Informant."

The movie, based on Kurt Eichenwald's book of the same name, is the true story of Mark Whitacre (Damon), an Ivy League graduate who is a rising star at Arthur Daniels Midland in the early 90's, when Whitacre learns of his company's illegal price fixing he chooses to go the FBI and becomes the highest ranked-executive to ever turn whistle blower. That meeting marked the first time that a participant in a price fixing cartel had ever voluntarily tipped off law-enforcement officials about a scheme.

Under the watch of FBI agents Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) and Robert Herndon (Joel McHale), Whitacre gathers evidence by secretly taping the cartels activity in business meetings in locations as far as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong. Whitacre worked with the FBI for over three years and in that time, he becomes extremely manic and has trouble sleeping developing a severe bipolar disorder.

In a stunning turn of events, Whitacre goes from hero to foe, as what he tells the FBI becomes more fiction than truth and is later discovered to have embezzled $11.5 million dollars from the same company he was informing the FBI about and would later be charged with the very same charge he was accusing his company for.

This film was fun to watch, highly hilarious and Damon should be in line for an Academy Award nomination.

Steven Soderbergh, who directed Damon in the three Ocean's films, does a great job in introducing such a complex story centered around Damon's solid portrayal, a portrayal so committed that Damon gained 30 pounds to play Whitacre.

The length of the film is not too long, and there were no slow points in the movie. It's almost as if you watch the movie to see Whitacre would lie about next.

The supporting cast held strong performances from both Bakula and a breakthrough role for Joel McHale (last seen as the bank teller in Spider-Man 2) whose the host of E's "The Soup" and star of NBC's "Community."

I would easily rate The Informant has one of the Best Movies of the Fall and maybe of the Year.

There's my review, next time on the Reel Revue, "G-Force", starring Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Penelope Cruz and Tracy Morgan.