The U.S. government decides to go after an agro-business giant with a price-fixing accusation, based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president-turned-informant Mark Whi... Read allThe U.S. government decides to go after an agro-business giant with a price-fixing accusation, based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president-turned-informant Mark Whitacre.The U.S. government decides to go after an agro-business giant with a price-fixing accusation, based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president-turned-informant Mark Whitacre.
- Awards
- 1 win & 21 nominations
- Alexander Whitacre
- (as Lucas Carroll)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaTo prepare for the role of the overweight character Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon purposely gained weight prior to filming. He did this by eating lots of hamburgers, pizza, and dark beer, which he described in an interview as being "really, really, really fun."
- GoofsThe film takes place from 1992-1994, yet the cars have Illinois license plates that first appeared in 2001.
- Quotes
Mark Whitacre: When polar bears hunt, they crouch down by a hole in the ice and wait for a seal to pop up. They keep one paw over their nose so that they blend in, because they've got those black noses. They'd blend in perfectly if not for the nose. So the question is, how do they know their noses are black? From looking at other polar bears? Do they see their reflections in the water and think, "I'd be invisible if not for that." That seems like a lot of thinking for a bear.
- Crazy creditsPrologue: "While this motion picture is based on real events, certain incidents and characters are composites, and dialog has been dramatized. So there."
- SoundtracksTrust Me
Music by Marvin Hamlisch
Lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman
Produced and Performed by Steve Tyrell
Steve Tyrell appears courtesy of E1 Music
I'll have to see this a second time with a DVD stop button to be able to fully catalog all the various modes that our filmmaker skips seamlessly through. The main device he weaves these modes around is the spine of the untrusted narrator. We have all sorts of layers and nodes of deception with the only ones we can really trust being the guys usually are the bottom of the garbage bin: the massive greedy company.
We have this fellow being dishonest to everyone, including himself. We have no idea where the line is that he actually believes and we hear only from him. Some of the internal dialog is hypnotizing: we are lulled into accepting it because so much of it is appealingly funny. It is a great trick of misdirection, allowing us to associate with this slippery reality.
Folded into this is are the watchers, nominally the FBI, then various lawyers and the wife, but us of course, punctuated by a video at the end directly to us (with the FBI behind a mirror).
A second surprise awaited me beyond the Soderbergh stretching. Matt Damon finally does something impressive. He is truly something worth watching here. I never would have guessed. I never would have believed. In fact, this wouldn't have worked at all, this suspended belief within the story, if he had not so believably become the character.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Languages
- Also known as
- Người Chỉ Điểm
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $22,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $33,316,821
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $10,464,314
- Sep 20, 2009
- Gross worldwide
- $41,771,168
- Runtime1 hour 48 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1