He is diagnosed as bipolar, which helps explain his bizarre behavior, but based on the evidence, a strong case could be made for attention-deficit disorder. The comedy is more amusing than uproarious, but Whitacre’s nutty inner monologues – stream-of-consciousness asides that grow increasingly paranoid as the walls cave in – steal the show. ![]() That doesn’t stop Soderbergh and Damon, who gained 30 pounds for the role, from treating him like one. Whitacre would be a joke if he weren’t capable of doing so much damage. Wearing a wire and recording his colleagues as they conspire to bilk the public, he fancies himself a real-life James Bond – Agent 0014, “because I’m twice as smart,” he explains – but Marvin Hamlisch’s goofy score, which cleverly lampoons Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme,” mocks him at every turn. ![]() Burns, who adapted his screenplay from journalist Kurt Eichenwald’s book of the same name (minus the cheeky exclamation mark) suggest that Whitacre, a real-life informant, was considered too much of a rube to be taken seriously as a mastermind thief – or a mastermind anything. How could this happen? Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. But he neglects to air his own dirty laundry: Even with the FBI tracking his every move, he manages to embezzle $9 million in company funds. He’s happy to out the ADM honchos who are fixing prices for lysine, an essential ingredient in corn-based products. He wants to be the man in the white hat, as he tells his FBI handlers (Scott Bakula and The Soup’s Joel McHale), but it doesn’t quite fit. Rather, he comes across as a hero of sorts, acting according to his conscience because it’s the right thing to do. If his story seems unbelievable, as the movie’s billboards loudly suggest, so is the man himself. ![]() Whitacre, a paunchy Midwestern everyman who sports an unflattering mustache and a comically prominent hairpiece he adjusts whenever the pressure builds, is the subject of Steven Soderbergh’s latest farce. Ripley, and Mark Whitacre, the seemingly guileless whistleblower who tries to take down the agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland in The Informant!, is that Ripley was a homicidal sociopath, while Damon’s Whitacre, whose book smarts are rivaled only by his idiocy in practical matters, is a pathological liar, and a sloppy one at that. The biggest difference between Tom Ripley, the duplicitous drifter Matt Damon played in The Talented Mr.
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