The Informant! (2009)

A nerdy executive at an American food/chemical corporation hits up the FBI with a doozie offering: He will be the fed’s star whistleblower spy against his corrupt, price-fixing employer. PBS drama? Not with Steven Soderbergh (the “Ocean’s” films) at the helm and Matt Damon in the lead. “The Informant!” is side-splitting funny, more twisty than “Shutter Island” ever hoped to be, and has the most unreliable narrator since Kevin Spacey played a man named Verbal. See, every word out of Mark Whitacre’s mouth is a lie. He is compulsive and pathological. Yet, Mark sees himself as conspiracy victim (he quotes Crichton and Grisham) and a spy, specifically, Agent 0014 (“I’m twice as smart as James Bond”). But he’s more 0000. He narrates aloud on his hidden wire and never listens to anyone except the voice in his head. And he’s stealing an untold fortune from his employer. And, yet, the genius of this film is that Matt Damon makes you want to believe this guy. Damon is Tom Hanks with an Eagle Scout badge. It's part of the fun: Every time Mark’s lies crumble, it’s a shock. Damon is hilarious, without ever slipping a wink, perfectly straight to Soderbergh’s tongue-in-cheek direction and the groovy, giddy score. A-