Life is a bitch and then you go to L.A.
“The Informers” is an intermixed combination of four or five of the thirteen or fourteen stories featured in the Bret Easton Ellis’ eponymous novel. According to the press notes he and co-writer Nicholas Jarecki pondered for some time about which stories they were going to use and how they were going to be presented. The mixture of stories is fine and the presentation is good enough; but the acting, direction and screenwriting recommend reading the book and giving this film a miss.
The time has come and gone when smoking cigarettes, drinking booze and playing stoner roles can make a film. Those cop-outs simply are no longer allowed. If a story has to be told that is mainly a story of stoners and drunks than it is the responsibility of the writer to tell it without the need for the ridiculous slurring of words and the falling down drunk in the bathroom and cutting oneself on broken pieces of a vodka bottle. Such things do not tell a story, they make up the front page of the tabloid we buy at the entrance to the subway for 50 cents.
Not that there isn’t a story being told here. Indeed it is a very creepy one. While Reagan is selling us the trickle down theory there is a new kid on the block when it comes to intravenous drug injection and random mixed gay and straight sex. The setting of the film in 1983 is the creepiest time for the new kid’s arrival. Nobody knew what it was, except there were these bruises and spots…
There is something about the great American dream being pounded into our heads and the massive economic war on the USSR being paid for by the country’s working class that begs exposure. It cries out for exaggerated criticism of the self-aggrandizing religious right who were sinning in the back room while robbing the populace blind. Of course, we hadn’t seen the Bush administration yet. Better things were yet to come.
If the film is a cautionary tale about why adults should not get falling down s**t-faced drunk and abuse their children, thank you Mister film-makers. We wouldn’t have known that without you. If it is a film about why rich teenagers and rock stars shouldn’t kill themselves, we hope rich teenagers and rock stars watch this film and learn. Of course, they won’t. They know their self-destructive nature is part and parcel of why people watch them.
The problem is that if intelligent audiences watch this film they are going to feel a little bit insulted by the hackneyed plot situations and the obvious disastrous outcomes. There is no irony here; it is replaced by simple hope that the film will soon be over and the doomed will die and get it over with.
Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke perform their usual near-perfect acting. They are as fascinating and as sickening as they ever were in any film. Winona Ryder is also good, but she has even less screen time than the other “Big Three” and they have little time to begin with. Even worse, their parts are not extremely significant. One would almost say their skills are wasted.
The screen time goes to Jon Foster, Amber Heard, Lou Pucci Taylor and Austin Nichols who play stoner punks and disenfranchised post-teens. Unfortunately they play those parts like stoner punks and disenfranchised teens, as if they deserve to be watched if only because of the pain and suffering they have gone through in their lives. The result is acting that comes off as four parts self-interest and one part audience engagement.
Directed by: Gregor Jordan
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton and Kim Basinger
Release: April 24, 2009
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