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.

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