The informant! Warner Bros. Pictures presents in association with Participant Media and Groundswell Productions, a Section Eight-Jaffe/Braunstein Enterprise ; produced by Gregory Jacobs, Jennifer Fox, Michael Jaffe, Howard Braunstein, Kurt Eichenwald ; screenplay by Scott Z. Burns ; directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Title from container.

Originally released as a motion picture in 2009.

"Based on a tattle-tale."

Special features: Deleted scenes.

The Informant is a 2009 American biographical-crime comedy film directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Scott Z. Burns. Mark Whitacre, a rising star at the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) office in Decatur, Illinois, during the early 1990s, blows the whistle on the company’s price-fixing tactics at the urging of his wife Ginger. One night in November 1992, Whitacre confesses to FBI special agent Brian Shepard that ADM executives—including Whitacre himself—had routinely met with competitors to fix the price of lysine, an additive used in the commercial livestock industry. Whitacre secretly gathers hundreds of hours of video and audio over several years to present to the FBI. He assists in gathering evidence by clandestinely taping the company’s activity in business meetings at various locations around the globe such as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong, eventually collecting enough evidence of collaboration and conspiracy to warrant a raid of ADM. Whitacre’s good deed dovetails with his own major infractions, while his internal, secret struggle with bipolar disorder seems to take over his exploits. The bulk of the film focuses on Whitacre's meltdown resulting from the pressures of wearing a wire and organizing surveillance for the FBI for three years, instigated by Whitacre's reaction, in increasingly manic overlays, to various trivial magazine articles he reads. In a stunning turn of events immediately following the covert portion of the case, headlines around the world report Whitacre had embezzled $9 million from his own company during the same period of time he was secretly working with the FBI and taping his co-workers, while simultaneously aiming to be elected as ADM CEO following the arrest and conviction of the remaining upper management members. In the ensuing chaos, Whitacre appears to shift his trust and randomly destabilize his relationships with Special Agents Shepard and Herndon and numerous attorneys in the process. Authorities at ADM begin investigating the forged paper trail Whitacre had built to cover his own deeds. After being confronted with evidence of his fraud, Whitacre's defensive claims begin to spiral out of control, including an accusation of assault and battery against Agent Shepard and the FBI, which had made a substantial move to distance their case from Whitacre entirely.

Director of photography, Peter Andrews ; editor, Stephen Mirrione ; music, Marvin Hamlisch.

Matt Damon, Melanie Lynskey, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale.

The U.S. government decides to go after an agri-business giant with a price-fixing accusation based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president turned informant Mark Whitacre. The FBI needs evidence, so Whitacre eagerly agrees to wear a wire and carry a hidden tape recorder in his briefcase, imagining himself as a kind of de facto secret agent.

MPAA rating: R; for language.

DVD, region 1, widescreen (1.85:1) presentation; Dolby Digital.

English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.