5. Mark Whitacre - The Informant! (2009)
Our first two films on this list center around real people and events, with the initial being the tragic, comedic, bizarre tale of a corporate whistleblower. In The Informant! Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre who was a high-level officer for the Fortune 500 company ADM, when, in the mid-90s he began to gather information for the FBI to be used as evidence that ADM was engaged in price-fixing schemes. But Whitacre himself has some personality quirks, delusions, and evident bi-polar disorder that make him a liability to the FBIs case and ultimately land him in prison. It would be interesting to watch, say, Michael Manns The Insider back to back with Steven Soderberghs The Informant! because while on the surface there are some similarities (both are about whistleblowers), they give the audience extremely different experiences. The Insider is set up like a thriller and we are fully behind the character of Jeffery Wigand. But The Informant! dances between several genres and ultimately leaves the audience in the difficult spot of not really wanting to root for any of the main parties, especially not Whitacre. This is tough because everything the audience gets is filtered through Whitacre (Damon provides a voice-over narration) and normally when our access point into a story is clearly from one perspective we want to like that character. In a way, the experience of watching this film is comparable to not liking oneself. Its an interesting little exercise for two hours, but were glad when its finished because its ultimately not enjoyable. We begin Whitacres journey with him happy that he is going to do the right thing and report the illegal activities of his company to the FBI. Soon, though, we becoming increasingly frustrated watching this guy bury himself in his own crimes.