No Ordinary Fool

It is hard to believe that this colorful and globetrotting tale of conspiracy, embezzlement, covert surveillance, and due process all spins on a humble amino acid known as lysine. Based closely on real-life events, this story has its origins in the Midwestern head offices of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), an enormous but little known agribusiness conglomerate. Told from the perspective of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a brilliant biochemist and divisional vice president, the drama initially concentrates on a possible act of industrial sabotage by an international competitor of ADM. However, when the FBI are called in to investigate, Whitacre voluntarily reveals details of an even greater act of white-collar crime and ends up spending the next two and a half years covertly helping the Bureau to build its case against his fellow conspirators.

“So far, so what?” you might think and you would have a point. For director Steven Soderbergh does play up the mind-numbing aspects of corporate working life – be it the rigor mortis of monthly accounts meetings, the banality of business travel, the unavoidable conversations with dullards, or the hamster-wheel obsession with promotion and bonuses. However, there is something rather unusual taking place at the same time – be it Marvin Hamlisch’s incongruously jaunty score, the various incidents of histrionic dialogue or behaviour, or the surprisingly brisk pace at which events unfold.

Above all, though, there is the curious figure of Mark Whitacre. Right from the outset, there is the puzzling question of whether he is a genius or a madman. On the surface, he seems like a highly successful executive with a wife, a family, a large home, and a garage filled with sports cars. Yet he willingly breaks ranks on the scandal that his company is involved in and gleefully dives into the role of being an undercover operative. Equally, there are no definitive answers to be found in Whitacre’s frequent voiceovers on subjects as diverse as how polar bears know that their noses are black, the pronunciation of his favourite German word (kugelschreiber, in case you were wondering), and the plot of Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun.

In playing the role, Damon treads a careful line between being eccentric and a buffoon with some success. Unfortunately, his role suffers, as does the overall film, from an even more hectic, increasingly unglued, and seemingly repetitive final third. Equally, the failure to develop ancillary characters such as Witacre’s wife (Melanie Lynskey) and the two FBI officers (Scott Bakula and Joel McHale) leads to some frustratingly unanswerable questions being asked at this stage. At the same time, Soderbergh does deserve credit for developing such a curious tone for a fact-based film about corporate greed – a mixture of aloof observation and offbeat humour. Admittedly, it does not quite come off as an idea, but it still sounds far better than The Men Who Stare at Goats!