The Informant!
| The Informant! | |
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Theatrical release poster by Neil Kellerhouse
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| Directed by | Steven Soderbergh |
| Produced by |
Gregory Jacobs Jennifer Fox Michael Jaffe Howard Braunstein Kurt Eichenwald |
| Written by | Scott Z. Burns |
| Based on |
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald |
| Starring |
Matt Damon Scott Bakula Joel McHale Melanie Lynskey |
| Narrated by | Matt Damon |
| Music by | Marvin Hamlisch |
| Cinematography | Peter Andrews |
| Edited by | Stephen Mirrione |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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108 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $22 million |
| Box office | $41,771,168 (Worldwide) |
The Informant! is a 2009 American biographical-comedy-crime film directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Scott Z. Burns, the film stars Matt Damon as the titular informant named Mark Whitacre, as well as Scott Bakula, Joel McHale and Melanie Lynskey. It depicts Whitacre's involvement as a whistle blower in the lysine price-fixing conspiracy of the mid-1990s as described in the 2000 nonfiction book The Informant, by journalist Kurt Eichenwald.
Released on September 18, 2009, The Informant! received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise directed towards Matt Damon's performance and the film's comedic yet ironic tone, although the latter has also been a point of derision by other critics.
Mark Whitacre, a rising star at Decatur, Illinois, based Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the early 1990s, blows the whistle on the company’s price-fixing tactics at the urging of his wife Ginger.
One night in November 1992, Whitacre confesses to FBI special agent Brian Shepard that ADM executives—including Whitacre himself—had routinely met with competitors to fix the price of lysine, an additive used in the commercial livestock industry. Whitacre secretly gathers hundreds of hours of video and audio over several years to present to the FBI. He assists in gathering evidence by clandestinely taping the company’s activity in business meetings at various locations around the globe such as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong, eventually collecting enough evidence of collaboration and conspiracy to warrant a raid of ADM.
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