Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Informant!’ Puts Matt Damon on a Wire

PatrickMcD — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:09:55 -0600

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Behind every great fortune lies a great crime, as the saying goes. In director Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant!,” he and Matt Damon carve out a satire where the “crime” becomes entangled with the larger issues of “justice.”

In this based-on-fact scenario, Damon plays Mark Whitacre, who famously cooperated in the 1990s with the FBI as a whistle blowing insider to the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) price fixing scandal. As a high-level executive at ADM, Whitacre was privy to meetings – many that he set up – where the price of a basic food ingredient was fixed through international skullduggery.

The Whole Truth: Matt Damon as Mark Whitarce in ‘The Informant!’
Photo credit: Copyright © Warner Bros. Pictures, All Rights Reserved

As the pressure builds and the FBI (as portrayed through agents played by Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) needs more evidence, the increasingly erratic Whitarce begins to unravel in unpredictable ways. The closer they all get to breaking the price fixing case, the more apparent it becomes that Whitarce will assure that his backside will be protected, either through passing misinformation or his own scandalous behavior.

This is a comedy, and a quite funny one at that. When the deadly human sin of greed starts to emerge, Damon’s bloated character responds with a variety of tics and self delusions, classically illustrated by director Soderbergh with a basic narration track that exposes Whitarce’s unbalanced sanity.

His random thoughts include (as voiced by Damon) what if there was a TV show about a guy who splits into two and calls himself, and spends the rest of the hour chasing down the other?

Scott Burn’s screenplay contains other absurd gems, especially in context with the playground antics of the price fixers. And it does expose the FBI and the federal lawyers as callous, when the stress to convict the fixers becomes more important than protecting the clearly overmatched Whitarce.

The FBI: Scott Bakula and Joel McHale as agents with Matt Damon in ‘The Informant!’
Photo credit: Copyright © Warner Bros. Pictures, All Rights Reserved

The Soderbergh touch is also felt in the sly satire. The title graphics and Marvin Hamlisch score are both rooted in the 1970s anti-hero movies, so much so that a colleague wondered if Hamlisch was in on the joke.

The background casting winks at the camera as well several times, as Thomas F. Wilson (Biff from “Back to the Future”), Patton Oswalt and other familiar comedians have cameos as straight-laced authority figures and co-workers.

Where The Informant! doesn’t work as well is in the languid story pacing and superfluous nature of Damon’s character. In the film’s eagerness to indict everyone, the moral of the ending is driven home again and again, and even the expected where-are-they-now graphics as a epilogue seems extracurricular.

But in the current debate on reform in big business, a good old fashion satire where we meet the enemy, and they are us, is all the more appropriate as the real American Dream continues unwinding in the post millennium.

’’The Informant!” opens everywhere September 18th and features Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, Melanie Lynskey, Patton Oswalt and Thomas F. Wilson, directed by Steven Soderbergh

By PATRICK McDONALD
Senior Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

Benicio Del Toro Shines in Steven Soderbergh’s Mesmerizing ‘Che’

BrianTT — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:21:04 -0700

Rating: 5.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” not only features one of the best recent performances by the excellent Benicio Del Toro but this challenging biopic, unlike any that has been made in years, is one of the best films of 2008.

Critics and audiences who are constantly lamenting the lack of filmmakers truly willing to take risks and provoke discussion should look no further than the two-part “Che”, opening as one experience in the “Roadshow Edition,” at the Landmark Century in Chicago today.

The multi-talented Soderbergh wants to provoke discussion with his complex recreation of what it was like to be in the company of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. He doesn’t believe that the life of “Che” should be easily disposable entertainment and he has made a film that reflects that artistic mind-set.

Benicio Del Toro as Che and Catalina Sandino Moreno as Aleida Guevara in Che directed by Steven Soderbergh
Photo credit: Daniel Daza

In one of the best performances of the year and one that should be in a lot more of the awards season discussion than it has been, Benicio Del Toro plays Guevara during the two most crucial parts of his life.

The first half of “Che,” sometimes referred to and shown as “The Argentine,” detailed Che’s arrival in Cuba and the overthrow of the Batista regime with Fidel Castro. We meet him on his way to Cuba, intercut with footage of a speech he gave at the UN at the height of his counter-culture fame. Che is presented as a natural leader, someone easy to get behind and follow, something many, many men did.

The second half of the film, sometimes referred to as “Guerilla,” is the mirror image of the success and fame of the first half and details Che’s final days in Bolivia. After Castro was put in power, Che went to Bolivia to see if lightning would strike twice with another revolution. It didn’t and he died there.

Soderbergh is trying to recreate the experience of actually being in the presence of one of the most recognizable figures of the twentieth century. We see the revolutionary as pop icon during his visit to New York to speak to the United Nations but also as an average human being. We see Che in his biggest moments, but also in quiet ones with his fellow revolutionaries. Intellectual, romantic, doctor, leader, revolutionary, speaker - “Che” is one of the most multi-faceted portraits to ever grace the typically two-dimensional genre known as the biopic.

Soderbergh consciously avoids turning Che into a hero. In fact, it’s easy to read the two films as a commentary on the inevitable failure of what Che believed in, Marxism. The revolution that worked in Cuba failed miserably in Bolivia. This is not a hero’s story. But it is one of the most mesmerizing and accomplished works from one of our best directors.

And Del Toro’s riveting performance drives it all. It is a remarkable emotional and physical transformation that easily carries the weight of Soderbergh’s daring and complex film on its shoulders.

“Che” is a film that I firmly believe will grow with esteem in the passing years. It is a movie that demands discussion and provokes its audience. Those can be hard films to recognize on their initial release.

There is a difference between “long” and “boring”. “Che” is undeniably the former, but never the latter. I’ve been more bored during films with a third of the running time of “Che”. The second half of “Che” should be slow, painful, and drawn out. This is a life that didn’t end in a blaze of glory. It burst into flames in Cuba and then slowly burned out in South America.

“Che” is one of the most daring and complicated films of the year, one that challenges viewers to look at what they expect from film differently. Does every biopic need to hit the same beats? Can a story be told in four hours instead of two? Can a film be both political and personal? Shouldn’t we expect more from what we call entertainment? Love it or hate it, Soderbergh is trying for something more with “Che” and it is a critic’s responsibility to praise the attempt to shatter expectations. “Che” shattered mine.

‘Che’ stars Benicio Del Toro, Demian Bichir, Rodrigo Santoro, Franka Potente, and Catalina Sandino Moreno. ‘Che,’ which was written by Peter Buckman and Benjamin A. van der Veen and directed by Steven Soderbergh, opened in Chicago on January 16, 2009 at Landmark Century.

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

‘Michael Clayton’ is Adult Antidote to Torrent of Monotonous Gobbledygook

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:56:52 -0600

CHICAGO – Don’t be fooled by its formulaic, Hollywoodspeak tagline.

“The truth can be adjusted” is the “Michael Clayton” way of saying this film has rammed in a whole hell of a lot more than you might first presume and is about to blindside you with everything a picture-perfect Hollywood product should be.

George Clooney in “Michael Clayton”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
An opulent, all-star cast as in “The Departed” sometimes yields the film of the year. At other times, the failure of that resolve can make financiers suicidal.

In the case of “Michael Clayton,” writer/director Tony Gilroy weaves the commanding George Clooney, flawlessly fanatical (and sometimes streaking) Tom Wilkinson, tautly corporate Tilda Swinton and the always-on-top-of-his-game Sydney Pollack into a film that pays its weight in gold.

Tom Wilkinson in “Michael Clayton”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
Executive producers Clooney, Steven Soderbergh, James Holt and Anthony Minghella either have it too easy or yet again know when lead is about to be fashioned into a mountain of bullion. Clooney himself carries the show in an exquisitely intricate story that ably pulls off the art of the circular plot.

Much in the same way “Pulp Fiction” starts with the end and circles back once the middle has been teemed in, Clooney in his inextricable role as a “fixer” of all things crooked plunges you into the wildly provocative world of corporate America.

Tilda Swinton in “Michael Clayton”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
While I only have love for the hilarity of late from “Superbad,” “Knocked Up” and the like, the gravity of “Michael Clayton” – much like this year’s “Fracture” with Anthony Hopkins – is the adult antidote to a torrent of monotonous gobbledygook devoid of poignant messaging.

A serious film with a serious plot, serious actors and an imperative statement, I thank the film gods it’s wedged into 2007 history because the year would have been lacking without it.

The fictional agrochemical company U/North and its looming calamity is at the heart of the film, which opens limited on Friday and goes wide on Oct. 12. It doesn’t take much fantasizing for U/North to smack of similiar, real-life corporate behemoths.

Sydney Pollack in “Michael Clayton”.
Photo courtesy of IMDb
While you could imagine crisis litigation going much like this through the realization of a potentially deadly byproduct at the expense of silver linings and golden executive parachutes, “Michael Clayton” importantly brings into the limelight the U.S. corporate machine while mercilessly illuminating what happens in back alleys.

Though lawyers certainly get the bad wrap of being blood-sucking money fiends, it’s less realized that in a courtroom their primary role is as a well-studied actor. It’s the side that not only tells the truth but tells the better truth that ultimately wolfs down all the cake.

“I’m the guy you buy!” isn’t just a climatic line Clooney uses to slap Swinton upside her head. It’s actually the catastrophic revelation that high-powered suits can freely and dispassionately ride that train of thinking today and only sometimes get caught along the way.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com