If you’ve never seen The Informant!, which just got a new 4K Blu-Ray, the easiest point of comparison in director Steven Soderbergh’s filmography is Erin Brockovich, another real-life story of corporate corruption tackled by an unlikely individual. But if you take a step back, The Informant!, which stars Matt Damon as the man who assisted a ‘90s FBI investigation into price-fixing in the animal feed industry, is part of Soderbergh’s surprisingly varied body of heist films.
“Pulling something off” is arguably the lens Soderbergh uses to explore the world, and the ambitious double con that Damon’s Mark Whitacre actually tried to pull off reveals how the heist movie depends on a balance between close-up magic and undeterminable chance. Unfortunately for Whitacre, the real world is far more chaotic than Hollywood makes it look.
