The Informant is based on real incidents in the early 1990s where a vice president at agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midlands helps the FBI investigate price fixing allegations. The main character, Mark Whitacre (played by Damon) tells the FBI that ADM is involved in price fixing with its so-called competitors. On 15 September, 2000, Chicago Public Radio’s broadcast of This American Life was about this bizarre and twisted story, and the book The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald of the New York Times was released in 2001.

You might start to watch The Informant online, thinking that it will be a great cure for insomnia, but you’ll discover a thrilling story instead. If any writer of thriller fiction had turned this in to an editor, she would probably be laughed at for how outlandish the plot was. But the fact that it’s real makes it even more strange. The FBI has Whitacre wear a wire for almost three years to capture recordings as evidence of criminal activities at ADM, where customers are called enemies and rivals are called friends.

The problem was, Whitacre was also busy embezzling millions of dollars from ADM and struggling in his personal life with mental illness. Even though you might think it would be tedious to watch The Informant online, since a simple Internet search would tell you how it ends, you’ll really be hooked. Sure, fixing the price of lysine doesn’t sound like the most enthralling plot, but the bizarre corporate world of ADM coupled with Whitacre’s personal weirdness more than makes up for it.

You could read the book and listen to the archived episode of This American Life and still be engrossed in the movie. Sometimes a real story that is stranger than fiction makes you realize just how malleable the concept of “truth” can be. Watch The Informant online and find out for yourself.

The Informant Trailer

Go watch The Informant trailer online. It’s on YouTube and a bunch of other sites and it’s only a couple of minutes long. Anyway, you’ll watch it and you’ll think, “Wait a minute. Is that the guy from The Soup playing an FBI agent?” Yep. It is.

While Matt Damon got fattened up for the part of the doughy real life character he plays, they had to try to un-handsome him a lot to make him believable. The trailer is quite funny, a reflection of the type of humor that can only spring from strange things that really happen. If The Informant were written as fiction, you would probably admire the satiric bite, but the fact that it’s taken from real events makes the story all the more stunning. Whether you go see the movie or not, you should watch The Informant trailer online and then incredulously ask yourself, “Did something this twisted actually happen?”

Watch The Informant Online Free

The Informant is a true crime thriller starring Matt Damon as a high level executive at American company Archer Daniel Midlands (ADM), an enormous corporation that makes the additives that go in and on your food every day. In the early 1990s, Mark Whitacre, played by Damon, informed the FBI that ADM and its international “rivals” were fixing prices on lysine, a substance that is used in growing food. The 15 September, 2000 broadcast of Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life covered the intricacies of the story, and the book The Informant, by New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, came out in 2001.

If you watch The Informant online, you’ll quickly see that a story that could be sedative-level boring is actually one of the most fascinating white collar crime thrillers ever. You can bet that if John Grisham came up with a plot this outlandish his publishers would tell him to rework it because it was too unbelievable. The fact that it’s real makes it even more unsettling and bizarre.

Whitacre wears a wire for the feds for the better part of three years and captures ongoing criminal conduct on the part of ADM, a company that refers to its customers as “the enemy” and its rivals as “friends.” There are just a couple of little problems: Mark Whitacre has serious struggles with bipolar disorder and he has spent years defrauding ADM of $9 million while he was taping his coworkers for the FBI.

While you might think it would be boring to watch The Informant online, even if you know how it ends, you’ll be hooked. Granted, fixing the price on lysine isn’t in itself very interesting, but the corporate culture at ADM and the main character’s struggle with serious mental illness more than make up for it. You could listen to the podcast of This American Life’s episode about ADM, read excerpts from the book on Amazon, and watch The Informant online and not lose interest.

Every once in awhile a “truth is stranger than fiction” account comes along and makes you realize what a squishy and subjective concept “truth” really is. Watch The Informant online and you’ll be amazed at how complex reality can be.

The Informant Review

The Informant, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon might go down as one of those “love it or hate it” films. The movie is based on actual events that occurred in the early 1990s at agricultural additive giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a highly paid executive at ADM who decides out of the goodness of his heart to help the FBI take down ADM in a price fixing scheme. Trouble is, at the same time he’s wearing a wire for the feds, Whitacre is helping himself to some $9 million dollars belonging to ADM.

There are two ways one could turn this story into a movie: as a straight-up real life crime thriller, or as a dark comedy about a mentally unbalanced corporate executive who envisions himself as “Agent 0014″ because he’s twice as smart as James Bond. Soderbergh chooses the latter, and if that’s what you’re prepared to see, then you’ll enjoy the movie. Some people will have problems with the fact that the story of ADM’s price fixing and hostile attitude toward the consumers who make it rich is pushed to the background.

The fattened-up Matt Damon skillfully tackles the role of Whitacre, and the inclusion of Joel McHale and Scott Bakula as a couple of FBI agents adds to the dark comedic vibe of the movie. One thing you’ll either love or hate is Whitacre’s running voice-over narration of the events in the film. To some it will seem distracting and stupid, while to others it will serve to cement the character’s dicey relationship with reality.

In keeping with the American executive of the 1990s background, the movie is shot in locations like corporate boardrooms and hotel rooms, each as depressingly functional as the next. Some of the film was shot at the actual home Whitacre and his wife lived in at the time.

If you go into this movie determined to go with Soderbergh’s take on the story, you won’t be disappointed. If you’re looking for a true crime narrative in the vein of All the President’s Men, you won’t like it. Described as “a corporate thriller as written by the Coen brothers,” The Informant skillfully portrays incidents that if written as fiction might be seen as satire taken a step too far.