The Informers (2008)

Simply Perfect

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Don't' listen to most people criticizing this movie. It's ridiculous that it currently has a rating of 5. This is an 8+ movie.**Spoiler** Preferably read this after seeing the movie**It's about AIDS and innocence lost. It's about being young and one day realizing you'll die. Going from being irresponsible, ignorant and immortal towards the opposite of those. The whole movie is leading up to the point where everyone's lives and actions become meaningless, and they will have to rethink and change their lifestyles. Even though this is untold, it also goes without saying and that is the beauty of this film. So it's partly about AIDS being introduced to the world, partly about becoming a grown-up or 'not-young-anymore', but mostly: It's about that one point in time when reality changes something and you realize you can never go back and nothing will be the same. The purported shallowness of this movie only serves to reinforce the depth of this transition. 'The higher they hang, the harder they fall' and so on. That's what the movie is about, a lot of people here obviously didn't get that so I guess the movie could be criticized for being too convoluted about its plot-twist ending.

Past film adaptations of Bret Easton Ellis novels have been well received. So, with Ellis on board as screenwriter, you could see where stars like Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke and Winona Ryder would have been attracted to The Informers. Unfortunately for all involved, including Ellis who would pretty much disown the movie after its release, the script was handed to director Gregor Jordan. And Jordan made a complete mess of it. He wanted to take things in a darker direction. Well, he succeeded in making it dark. He didn't succeed in anything else. He ended up making a truly awful movie.The film unfolds in early 1980s Los Angeles. It's a sex, drugs and rock and roll story. For brevity's sake, let's just say that everyone is sleeping with everyone else. That's pretty much accurate. It's an ensemble piece with a whole bunch of characters, none of whom you actually end up caring about. All these characters have their own stories which are in some cases loosely intertwined, in some cases not intertwined at all and thus ultimately pointless. Thornton and Basinger just mail in their performances, they're totally lifeless. Rourke's character is a waste of time, he's only in one of those completely pointless subplots. Ryder really has only a bit part. These older stars may draw the attention but the film's story focuses more on the younger generation. Nobody in this younger crowd stands out as being particularly interesting, none of the performances rise above the mundane. They have some sex, then we cut back to one of the other story lines, then we come back to them again and they have more sex. If nothing else at least Amber Heard, playing a young woman who gets passed around like a used handkerchief, looks spectacular. So there's that.The only character who comes across as truly sympathetic is a young doorman, Jack, played by Brad Renfro. If any performer comes away from this film with any credit at all it's Renfro, playing a guy struggling to deal with the shady doings of his uncle, the Rourke character. Unfortunately Renfro's performance largely goes for naught as this story really doesn't tie into the main plot at all. Honestly though saying this film has a main plot is probably giving it too much credit. There is no real story tying this thing together. Too much time is wasted on characters who serve no purpose. There's a drugged-out rock singer who likes to sleep with young girls. There's a guy on the world's most awkward vacation in Hawaii with his dad. What do these characters have to do with anything? Nothing. Nothing at all. The film is just a jumbled, largely incoherent, mess. And then it just ends. No resolution. All these stories, no endings. On the one hand you're grateful it's over because you certainly don't want to watch this film any longer. On the other hand you're left feeling insulted that you wasted any time at all watching this pointless film which was ultimately going nowhere.

In hindsight the only reason to watch this movie is to admire Amber Heard's next to perfect physique.Otherwise it is yet another boring adaptation of king of boring Bret Easton Ellis, who delights in writing about shallow people living their shallow lives - to be sure in luxurious settings. Unfortunately none of these people are the least interesting and one probably learns more about the world studying an ashtray for two hours.Thanks to an uninspired script and a directing without direction the fantastic cast can't act with either credibility or passion and looks as interested in the movie as we are.It may be that this film becomes watchable under the influence. Perhaps a DVD is given free of charge for any significant purchase of coke in Hollywood.

I can't call this movie utterly worthless because it does feature a beautiful and gloriously naked Amber Heard in several different scenes, as well as a couple of veteran performers who are fun to watch. Taken as a whole, however, I've gotten more enjoyment out of reading the ingredients on the side of a box of cereal.Set in 1983 Los Angeles, this film is based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis. But unlike Less Than Zero, an Ellis-based movie that was roughly contemporaneous to the era it was depicting, The Informers is a dry and as cold and as distant as an archaeological dig or a scientist studying something under a microscope. It also has all the subtlety of an incontinent badger, tossing awful 1980s fashions and hairstyles in your face and throwing up a 80s pop culture reference roughly ever 4 minutes. I nearly stopped the DVD before this thing was halfway through and did something more useful with my time. Like clipping toenails or plucking out some back hair.This is one of those stories where we're all supposed to learn something by looking at the miserable, pathetic lives of a bunch of tangentially connected people. Graham Sloan (Jon Foster) is an aimless, drug-dealing college kid who spends his time either having sex with his girlfriend Christie (Amber Heard) and his best friend Martin (Austin Nichols) or lamenting the emptiness of his existence. Martin one of Ellis' soulless douchebags and Christie is basically just a hot piece of ass that winds up being another 80s pop culture reference. Graham's father (Billy Bob Thornton) is a movie producer that's trying to get back together with Graham's mother (Kim Basinger), even though he's still hung up on a local newswoman (Winona Ryder).But wait, there's more! Graham's other friend Tim (Lou Taylor Pucci) spends the movie in Hawaii with a father (Chris Isaak) he feels nothing but contempt for. We also get the tale of a burned out rock star (Mel Raldo) whose wife is also sleeping with Graham's friend Martin. And we get to see the front desk clerk at Christie's apartment (Brad Renfro) get mixed up in a kidnapping and sex slavery deal with Peter (Mickey Rourke), a scary dude and the clerk's father figure.As mentioned previously, the good of this movie consists of three things.1. The nude and lovely Heard.2. Kim Basinger's performance as a woman on the edge of emotional collapse. She only gets one scene where she gets to yell and carry on, but the seething turmoil she keeps going under the skin of Graham's mom is something to see. For an actress who was never much more than a face in her prime, Basinger is aging quite gracefully as both a woman and a thespian.3. Getting to experience Mickey Rourke's charisma on screen. Whatever that indefinable "it" is that some people have and some don't, Rourke has it in spades. It's too bad that so many years of various forms of self-abuse have left Rourke so freakish-looking that there will never be that many more good roles for him. He's barely more than a cameo here, which is what his career will largely be from now on…unless he starts doing a lot of science-fiction.Beyond that, and some good work in a bad role by the late Brad Renfro, the rest of The Informers is pedantic rubbish. There's no point to these characters, their perversions or their suffering. Billy Bob Thornton looks like he's acting under the influence of Prozac. Winona Ryder appears to have taken this job as a form of extended community service. The younger members of the cast have the appeal of frozen slabs of beef, which may be intentional but remains unappetizing. All of the disparate plot threads resolve themselves exactly the way you expect them to, occasionally doing so with a character explaining what the resolution is supposed to mean so the audience doesn't miss it. It's enough of a struggle to get through a stupid film. It's almost too much to bear when that stupid film thinks I'm stupider than it.This is yet another one of those movies that leaves you wondering "Who the bleep thought this was a good idea?" It's not like the name of Bret Easton Ellis guarantees any box office or critical acclaim. There had to have been a lot of money, drugs and sexual favors exchanged to get this film made. Unless someone is willing to give you money, drugs or do that thing your significant other won't do, stay away from The Informers.