Props to screenwriter Scott Z. Burns for boiling down Kurt Eichenwald's 600-page book The Informant: A True Story without sacrificing coherence. And Matt Damon, bulked up by 30 pounds and spluttering his manic lines from under a caterpillar mustache, reconfirms his virtuosity and his willingness to dive deep into such a dodgy personality. On the downside, despite a small army of comedians in cameo roles, The Informant! has nothing like the rich field of subsidiary characters encountered in Erin Brockovich and Traffic. That lack of vibrancy is aggravated by the dominance of prairie-flat Midwest speech patterns and cadences (most of the film unreels in Illinois), and the razzmatazz score by veteran tunesmith Marvin Hamlisch sounds like pep-rally music on an industrial film. Soderbergh also photographed the movie (under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), and his decision to show everything through a corn-mush filter turns it into a big-screen YouTube experience. --Richard T. Jameson