I had wanted to see this movie for a while, having had it sitting in my DVD queue for over a year or so sitting at the very bottom. I had heard several negative reviews from a couple of friends I asked about it but I went at it with unbiased opinion and decided to fast track it to the top to get it over with.
I'm a fan of a lot of Matt Damon's work, and him playing a quirky rising bio-engineer genius for the firm ADM was kind of a weird step. He's the wholesome, All-American driving fancy foreign cars, white collar dork. Loving wife. Two adopted children. Large house. Upper class educated wealth in the quaint Midwest.
All throughout the movie Matt Damon's character Mark Whitacre is constantly having a inner monologue that brings you closer to the character. I'm a fan of inner monologues, full of babbling about anything, off the cuff comments, it's refreshing, it reflects how I personally think and connects me with characters that seem so different but very similar.
Anyways.
It's the mid 1990s, ADM is the target of foreign espionage from other lysine (corn) competitors the Japanese. But all is awry at the very beginning. And ADM contacts the FBI to get involved to investigate the threats against ADM. Mark is the number one person of interest and openly allows the FBI tap his business line at home in case the Japanese call him again. Mark being the good ol' wholesome American later gives in that all is not really what it seems with ADM and the other lysine corn firms worldwide. Price-fixing on a international scale. And in the first part of the movie, where you guessed it, Mark Whitacre becomes an informant for the FBI the movie shines. Matt Damon is goofy, impressionable, and slowly digging himself into a hole trying to dig up dirt on his co-workers, then trying to cover it up and remove himself from the FBI's operation, the finally being forced back in going all out with the latest high tech recording gadgetry. Leading a double life, paranoid and awkward. The rising star of ADM and the center of a case against them for the FBI.
Yet, somehow towards the end of the first half of the movie, it all starts to fall apart, scenes become interjected in weird parts, everything seems off kilter, new people appear, background is limited, the story goes out the window and it is one hurry up session all the way to the end where Mark Whitacre is apparently some embezzlement mastermind and he faked the sabotage plan. Has mental breakdown. Becomes Bipolar. The executives he sold out, his friends, turn on him. He ends up going to court, slowly revealing how much money he had actually taken 5, 7, 9, 11 million in a....
Wait.
Where am I?
And that was exactly the problem I had with the movie. Much like the John Dillinger movie staring Johnny Depp this movie expects you to know what exactly is going on without revealing much to help you along. It's as if the director expected that you have researched that the ADM price-fixing scandal and Mark Whitacre, and which is actually something that happened in the early 90s and you should know all about it, there is no need to explain anything. So much like the Dillinger movie, the scenes burst forward into the future with barely a trace of continuity, fragmented, to new locations, with new people, and new situations, with no explanation of why, who, and what. Moving faster and faster to the anti-climatic ending of a balding Mark Whitacre in jail, explaining his actions to an interviewer.
And if you are not incredibly determined and observant you'll never notice that Mark Whitacre is experiencing a mental breakdown towards the end. You're suppose to know that his erratic driving and his lies (including one about being kidnapped for a joyride) are all part of his elaborately convenient bipolar disorder which is revealed by his therapist. And being a compulsive liar also something that it subtly hidden in, it all seems justified but then it gets out of control. Not like a rolling snowball into a snow boulder but rather many small snowballs sitting on a flat plain that eventually somehow grows the momentum off scene into a giant snowball. For no reason at all. No explained reason at least.
What happened to the Mark Whitacre at the beginning? Now we have some power hungry, greedy, conniving, All-American white collar criminal asshole.
When I watch a movie I like to at least think I know my character or know what my character is going to be capable of. Mark Whitacre although he did all of these things in reality, the way he was portrayed in this movie made him look like a naïve nerd with only good intentions. And that's it. And maybe the director pulled a fast one on me, but not without confusing me first and then socking me right in the mouth. It's not even worth noting the cast of the rest of the movie which even so is full of cameos from comedians, maybe the only redeeming feature is seeing Patton Oswalt.
Watch if:
You're a fan of Matt Damon, and you know at least a little bit about the ADM price-fixing scandal, you've read the book written on it (by journalist Kurt Eichenwald ), and you want to experience whether or not the director was true to the book because you already know everything.
Otherwise if you feel like wasting some time, you feel like just taking a blind ride and doing some research on it later to finally understand what went on. Give it a shot. There were a couple notable funny scenes. But the movie on a whole is rather forgettable and I more than likely will refuse to see in the future to see if I can grasp the things I could before. It just wasn't that interesting and the fragmented second half turned me off.
6/10
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