A married couple accidentally gets caught up in a blackmail plot when they steal someone’s dinner reservation.
The Plot: (spoilers)
Tax advisor Phil Foster (Steve Carell) and his realtor wife Claire (Tina Fey) are in a rut, to the point that for their weekly date night they always go to the same local restaurant and order the same things (and joke about other people in the restaurant).
When they find out that another couple they know is getting divorced, Phil makes a last-minute decision to take Claire to a trendy new restaurant in Manhattan. They arrive at the busy restaurant without a reservation and fail to talk their way to a table. While waiting at the bar for a table to open up, they hear a reservation for the “Tripplehorns” called repeatedly with no response. Phil responds and claims that he and Claire are the Tripplehorns. They take the Tripplehorn reservation and enjoy themselves.
Their meal is interrupted by two men (Jimmi Simpson & Common) who ask them to come with them. Phil and Claire believe they’ve been caught taking someone else’s reservation, but find out that the men are after the Tripplehorns for a flash drive they stole from mafia boss Joe Miletto. The men don’t believe Phil and Claire’s protest that they aren’t really the Tripplehorns.
Threatened at gunpoint, Phil says the flash drive is hidden in Central Park. Phil and Claire are taken to the park and manage to escape. They go to the police station and while giving their story to a skeptical detective, see the two men from before wearing badges. Not knowing who to trust, they leave the police station and try to find the real Tripplehorns.
Phil and Claire return to the restaurant in disguise and manage to get the Tripplehorns’ phone number from the reservation computer.
Claire remembers a former client of hers who works as a security consultant and might be able to help. The Fosters break into a real estate office to get his address and show up at his door. The former client, Holbrooke Grant (Mark Wahlberg) finds an address for the phone number registered to a Tom Felton. The corrupt cops arrive and Phil and Claire escape in Grant’s Audi R8.
Phil and Claire track down Tom “Taste” Felton (James Franco) and his girlfriend “Whippit” (Mila Kunis), who made the reservation under the Tripplehorn alias but spotted the corrupt cops at the restaurant and left. They realize that if Phil and Claire found them, the bad guys are probably on their way, so they go on the run, leaving the stolen flash drive with the Fosters.
Phil and Claire also take off in Grant’s car, fleeing the corrupt cops and crashing into a taxi in the process, which leads to perhaps the strangest car chase scene ever, during which Phil accesses the flash drive and discovers it has evidence that powerful district attorney Frank Crenshaw is also working with the mafia and enjoys the company of prostitutes. By the end of the chase, the Audi is wrecked and the flash drive is at the bottom of the East River.
Phil and Claire realize that Taste and Whippit were going to use the flash drive to blackmail Crenshaw. They return to Grant and he reluctantly agrees to help them again. Phil and Claire go to the mafia strip club Crenshaw visits, posing as a new girl and her pimp. They manage to make their way to Crenshaw’s private room and try to carry out the blackmail scheme. In the end, the police show up and have enough evidence to arrest Joe Miletto (Ray Liotta), Frank Crenshaw (William Fichtner) and the corrupt cops, thanks to Phil, who was wearing a wire thanks to Grant and had notified the police of his plan. Phil and Claire happily return home, having rekindled the romance in their marriage.
My Review:
Date Night doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be a comedy or an action movie, which means it doesn’t do a great job at either. Considering the talent involved, it would have worked much better if it had committed to the comedy. Steve Carell and Tina Fey are excellent and are very convincing as a married couple. The rest of the cast is competent, but Carell and Fey carry the film. It only really works when they get to play off each other, which fortunately they get a lot of time to do. The plot, while necessary to get Carell and Fey from one strange situation to the next, almost seems to get in the way, and the resolution is somewhat of a letdown, as it is predictable and, aside from an awkward pole dance, has little humor. This is unfortunate, because when it is trying to be funny, it succeeds, but then abandons the comedy to resolve a plot that the audience doesn’t really care about. I was left with the feeling that there should have been more. The theme of Phil and Claire’s marriage being in trouble doesn’t help, as it is completely unnecessary, gives the movie a slow start that isn’t particularly funny and also has to be shown to be resolved at the end, leaving the movie to end on a sentimental note with the characters making out in the front yard instead of a humorous one. The humorous outtakes shown over the credits help a little, but not enough. The film needs more of Carell and Fey alternating between panicking and ineptly thwarting bad guys and Carell awkwardly looking on as Fey inadvertently flirts with a perpetually shirtless Mark Walhberg and less of the emotional baggage tacked on to make it seem like the characters needed to go through all this. Why can’t a crazy adventure be just that? Hopefully, Carell and Fey get another opportunity to work together in a project that uses them to their full potential.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Informant! (2009)
Based on a true story, Matt Damon plays a corporate whistleblower who exposes a price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI, only to have some secrets of his own.
The Plot: (Spoilers)
In the early 1990s, Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) is an executive at Archer-Daniels-Midland, where he is in charge of the company’s production of a new food additive called lysine. ADM’s lysine production capacity is being limited by a mysterious virus in a lysine plant, and Whitacre is under pressure to solve the problem. One day, Whitacre reports to his boss that he received a phone call from someone at a Japanese competitor, who claimed that the virus was planted by a mole specifically to stop ADMs lysine production, and that he would provide the name of the mole and the way to stop the virus for $10 million. Whitacre’s boss tells Whitacre that if he gets another call he should try to talk the price down. ADM’s security director Mark Cheviron (Thomas F. Wilson) decides to call in the FBI to investigate the call and hopefully find the mole. As the investigation gets started, FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) comes to Whitacre’s home to tap his phone line. At the insistence of his wife Ginger (Melanie Lynskey), Whitacre tells Shepard about a price-fixing conspiracy for lysine and other food additives involving ADM and its competitors around the world.
Whitacre starts working as an undercover informant for FBI agents Shepard and Herndon (Joel McHale), recording meetings all over the world with concealed tape recorders and hidden cameras to get the FBI enough evidence to prosecute ADM’s executives, which takes about three years. In addition to wanting to stop the price-fixing, Whitacre believes that he will become ADM’s CEO after the other executives are arrested, an end result that the FBI agents never clearly admit is unlikely (though Ginger tries).
The stress takes its toll on Whitacre, and at times he frustrates the FBI agents with his unreliability, at one point claiming that he has stopped making tapes because the ADM executives have been scared straight from fear of being caught. Despite these issues, and some other amusing examples of Whitacre’s ineptitude as a spy such as narrating his tapes, conspicuously inspecting a lamp for a hidden camera the FBI told him about and trying to fix a malfunctioning tape recorder hidden in his briefcase in the middle of a meeting, Whitacre succeeds in delivering the FBI enough evidence for a raid without giving himself away (though he almost gives the raid away by telling innocent coworkers, such as his secretary, about it, leading to one of the executives knowing about it).
The FBI maintains Whitacre’s cover by temporarily taking him into custody as well, so the other executives won’t suspect him, but they tell him it is important that he tell them right away that he plans to cooperate with the FBI’s investigation and get his own lawyer that is separate from those who work for ADM. Whitacre doesn’t say any of this until he is presented with a lawyer provided by ADM, and after a closed-door meeting between Whitacre and the company lawyer, which the audience doesn’t see or hear, the company lawyer and Whitacre tell the executives that they agree that Whitacre should have a different lawyer.
Though he is no longer supposed to be talking to them, Whitacre has lunch with Shepard & Herndon, asking them about “hypothetical” situations leading up to kickbacks and embezzlement, which he says were “standard practice” among the executives at ADM, and that his boss showed him how. When asks how much money is involved, Whitacre basically admits to taking $500,000. They tell him he needs to admit everything to his lawyers.
Whitacre doesn’t tell his lawyers about everything though, only certain things, and ADM’s own investigation finds more and more instances of Whitacre’s embezzlement, laundered through forged invoices from fictional overseas companies, which Whitacre was engaged in while he was working with the FBI. (Some of this was seen earlier in the film, though it wasn’t entirely clear at the time what was happening.) Whitacre doesn’t admit to any specific instances until he is presented with evidence, to the annoyance of his lawyers, who try to make the case that Whitacre cracked under the stress the FBI created by making him an undercover agent with no training, but the mounting evidence against Whitacre, who ultimately admits to having embezzled a total of $9 million, from before and after he started working with the FBI, doesn’t help their case. Whitacre also can’t stay out of the media spotlight, despite being told not to talk to the media. He starts making wild claims to defend himself, including that the FBI told him to destroy tapes that didn’t support their case and that Shepard hit him with a briefcase. It is eventually found that Whitacre is bipolar and a chronic liar. His original story about a mole sabotaging ADM’s lysine facility, the original reason the FBI got involved, was just a story he made up because of the pressure he was under to solve the problem; he never actually got a phone call and soon after the natural cause of the virus was found and the problem was solved. Even a story he told several times in the film about his parents dying when he was young, leading to him being adopted by a rich man who owned an amusement park is found to be a lie: nothing ever happened to his middle-class parents, who are still alive, and he made up the story for his application essays to Ivy League colleges and had to stick to his story when he was accepted. Eventually he and his lawyers frustrate each other to the point that they part ways, and Whitacre ends up with a much less competent lawyer and is sent to prison for the embezzlement with a much longer sentence than the ADM executives who were guilty of price-fixing.
In the final scene, an older, incarcerated Whitacre is seen making a video plea for a presidential pardon, with the help of Herndon, who felt that Whitacre deserved a lesser sentence for helping the FBI. The film closes by stating that Whitacre never received a pardon, but served his sentence and became the Chief Operating Officer of Cypress Systems in California.
My Review:
This is such a strange story that it would be unbelievable if it weren’t actually true. Little of what Whitacre does makes sense, but that is the point. The story is compelling and definitely takes some unexpected turns. Matt Damon gives a good performance as an unusual character, and the supporting cast does fine, though none of them stand out. The film is directed by Steven Soderbergh, perhaps best known for Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen, which also feature Damon. In an odd choice, the titles and even some of the music seem to be more appropriate for a film set the late 60’s than in the early 90’s. The use of voiceovers by Damon to show Whitacre’s inner thoughts, which often have little in anything to do with the story, works well though, and is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the film. This is a difficult movie to describe, but I enjoyed it. I would criticize the trailers, which depicted it a more of a comedy, and while there are definitely comedic elements to it, it didn’t really seem meant to be a comedy, but more of a cautionary example of how lying can quickly get out of hand and lead to serious consequences.
The Plot: (Spoilers)
In the early 1990s, Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon) is an executive at Archer-Daniels-Midland, where he is in charge of the company’s production of a new food additive called lysine. ADM’s lysine production capacity is being limited by a mysterious virus in a lysine plant, and Whitacre is under pressure to solve the problem. One day, Whitacre reports to his boss that he received a phone call from someone at a Japanese competitor, who claimed that the virus was planted by a mole specifically to stop ADMs lysine production, and that he would provide the name of the mole and the way to stop the virus for $10 million. Whitacre’s boss tells Whitacre that if he gets another call he should try to talk the price down. ADM’s security director Mark Cheviron (Thomas F. Wilson) decides to call in the FBI to investigate the call and hopefully find the mole. As the investigation gets started, FBI agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) comes to Whitacre’s home to tap his phone line. At the insistence of his wife Ginger (Melanie Lynskey), Whitacre tells Shepard about a price-fixing conspiracy for lysine and other food additives involving ADM and its competitors around the world.
Whitacre starts working as an undercover informant for FBI agents Shepard and Herndon (Joel McHale), recording meetings all over the world with concealed tape recorders and hidden cameras to get the FBI enough evidence to prosecute ADM’s executives, which takes about three years. In addition to wanting to stop the price-fixing, Whitacre believes that he will become ADM’s CEO after the other executives are arrested, an end result that the FBI agents never clearly admit is unlikely (though Ginger tries).
The stress takes its toll on Whitacre, and at times he frustrates the FBI agents with his unreliability, at one point claiming that he has stopped making tapes because the ADM executives have been scared straight from fear of being caught. Despite these issues, and some other amusing examples of Whitacre’s ineptitude as a spy such as narrating his tapes, conspicuously inspecting a lamp for a hidden camera the FBI told him about and trying to fix a malfunctioning tape recorder hidden in his briefcase in the middle of a meeting, Whitacre succeeds in delivering the FBI enough evidence for a raid without giving himself away (though he almost gives the raid away by telling innocent coworkers, such as his secretary, about it, leading to one of the executives knowing about it).
The FBI maintains Whitacre’s cover by temporarily taking him into custody as well, so the other executives won’t suspect him, but they tell him it is important that he tell them right away that he plans to cooperate with the FBI’s investigation and get his own lawyer that is separate from those who work for ADM. Whitacre doesn’t say any of this until he is presented with a lawyer provided by ADM, and after a closed-door meeting between Whitacre and the company lawyer, which the audience doesn’t see or hear, the company lawyer and Whitacre tell the executives that they agree that Whitacre should have a different lawyer.
Though he is no longer supposed to be talking to them, Whitacre has lunch with Shepard & Herndon, asking them about “hypothetical” situations leading up to kickbacks and embezzlement, which he says were “standard practice” among the executives at ADM, and that his boss showed him how. When asks how much money is involved, Whitacre basically admits to taking $500,000. They tell him he needs to admit everything to his lawyers.
Whitacre doesn’t tell his lawyers about everything though, only certain things, and ADM’s own investigation finds more and more instances of Whitacre’s embezzlement, laundered through forged invoices from fictional overseas companies, which Whitacre was engaged in while he was working with the FBI. (Some of this was seen earlier in the film, though it wasn’t entirely clear at the time what was happening.) Whitacre doesn’t admit to any specific instances until he is presented with evidence, to the annoyance of his lawyers, who try to make the case that Whitacre cracked under the stress the FBI created by making him an undercover agent with no training, but the mounting evidence against Whitacre, who ultimately admits to having embezzled a total of $9 million, from before and after he started working with the FBI, doesn’t help their case. Whitacre also can’t stay out of the media spotlight, despite being told not to talk to the media. He starts making wild claims to defend himself, including that the FBI told him to destroy tapes that didn’t support their case and that Shepard hit him with a briefcase. It is eventually found that Whitacre is bipolar and a chronic liar. His original story about a mole sabotaging ADM’s lysine facility, the original reason the FBI got involved, was just a story he made up because of the pressure he was under to solve the problem; he never actually got a phone call and soon after the natural cause of the virus was found and the problem was solved. Even a story he told several times in the film about his parents dying when he was young, leading to him being adopted by a rich man who owned an amusement park is found to be a lie: nothing ever happened to his middle-class parents, who are still alive, and he made up the story for his application essays to Ivy League colleges and had to stick to his story when he was accepted. Eventually he and his lawyers frustrate each other to the point that they part ways, and Whitacre ends up with a much less competent lawyer and is sent to prison for the embezzlement with a much longer sentence than the ADM executives who were guilty of price-fixing.
In the final scene, an older, incarcerated Whitacre is seen making a video plea for a presidential pardon, with the help of Herndon, who felt that Whitacre deserved a lesser sentence for helping the FBI. The film closes by stating that Whitacre never received a pardon, but served his sentence and became the Chief Operating Officer of Cypress Systems in California.
My Review:
This is such a strange story that it would be unbelievable if it weren’t actually true. Little of what Whitacre does makes sense, but that is the point. The story is compelling and definitely takes some unexpected turns. Matt Damon gives a good performance as an unusual character, and the supporting cast does fine, though none of them stand out. The film is directed by Steven Soderbergh, perhaps best known for Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen, which also feature Damon. In an odd choice, the titles and even some of the music seem to be more appropriate for a film set the late 60’s than in the early 90’s. The use of voiceovers by Damon to show Whitacre’s inner thoughts, which often have little in anything to do with the story, works well though, and is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the film. This is a difficult movie to describe, but I enjoyed it. I would criticize the trailers, which depicted it a more of a comedy, and while there are definitely comedic elements to it, it didn’t really seem meant to be a comedy, but more of a cautionary example of how lying can quickly get out of hand and lead to serious consequences.
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