Thanks to Steven Soderbergh’s latest movie, I get to have a blog post with an exclamation point in the title. So there (which is how the opening title screen defends the liberties taken with the true story of corporate whistleblower Mark Whitacre). It is an overstated way to set the overstated tone of this movie that is a dark comedy dressed in bright colors and cheerful music. Although the events of the movie transpire in the mid-1990’s, Soderbergh uses a palette of yellows and oranges and suppresses the color vibrancy to make it look not only like it is set in the 60’s, but like it was filmed then too. Even the titles look like they were borrowed from Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock.
Mark Whitacre (link has spoilers) is a Vice President at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), a corporation whose primary function appears to be the manipulation of the corn market and ensuring that its derivatives are part of every food product sold. When his lysine development program is threatened by viruses, he reveals to his bosses that a Japanese colleague working for a competing (but complicit) agri-giant has told him that there is a mole at ADM sabotaging the project. This brings in the FBI in the form of two sincere agents played by Scott Bakula and Joel McHale (who is having a big month, with the premiere of his weekly TV show “Community” and the long-running “Soup” on E! (I just wanted to get another ! in there)). Whitacre, faced with the FBI bugging his phones, then turns the tables on ADM and reveals to the FBI that ADM has long been involved in price-fixing.
What follows is a sadly comical series of missteps. Whitacre, played as a good-natured and naive everyman by Damon, has serious problems with telling the truth. Spending two years working undercover for the FBI can’t have helped, so that by the time the FBI is ready to spring their trap, Whitacre has managed to get himself into a spot of trouble too. The revelations of his poor decision-making, to put it kindly, produce the kind of sentiment in the audience that seeing a dog fall for the old fake-throw trick produces: rueful sympathy and a bit of annoyance with a touch of humor. Like the dog, Whitacre remains remarkably cheerful even as he gets himself deeper and deeper into trouble. At least as portrayed by Damon and Soderbergh. One can’t help but imagine that the real Whitacre was more upset. The movie is not only fascinating and entertaining, it has motivated me to find out just what really happened in the mid-1990’s with Mark Whitacre and ADM. So there.
I want to see it. And the invention of lying came out today, too, and I can’t wait to see that! just need to find a theatre with tickets for less than £10…