Movie Review : The Informers (2009)

•Genre: Drama, Suspense/Thriller
•Running Time: 98 min.
•MPAA Rating: R
•Director: Gregor Jordan
•Writer: Bret Easton Ellis, Nicholas Jarecki
•Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke, Jon Foster, Amber Heard, Rhys Ifans, Chris Isaak, Lou Taylor Pucci, Mel Raido

Synopsis

Focusing on the Los Angeles of the early 1980s, "The Informers" balances a vast array of characters that represent both the top of the heap (a Hollywood dream merchant, a dissolute rock star, an aging newscaster) and the bottom (a voyeuristic doorman, an amoral ex-con). Connecting all these intertwining strands are the quintessential Brett Easton Ellis protagonists--a group of beautiful, blonde young men and women who sleep all day and party all night, doing drugs--and one another--with abandon, never realizing that they are dancing on the edge of a volcano.

Movie Review

The Informers (2009)

Back to the ’80s, for Assorted Hookups in a Wasteland of Privilege

Graham (Jon Foster) and Martin (Austin Nichols) are sitting in a Porsche parked in the hills overlooking Los Angeles. Graham is doing a lot of coke. Martin has been doing Graham’s mom, and also Graham’s girlfriend, Christie (Amber Heard), and also — as he points out just in case we were having trouble identifying the naked blond bodies piling up in various beds — Graham. But such doings are not on Graham’s mind. He is in a moral crisis: “I want someone to tell me what’s good. And I want someone to tell me what’s bad.” He goes on to ask what happens if there’s no one around to tell you what’s good and what’s bad.

One thing that happens is a movie like “The Informers,” of which Graham and Martin are but two of a dozen or so principal inhabitants. They are neither the most messed up nor the least interesting characters to surface in Gregor Jordan’s puzzling and tedious adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s book of short stories. But these two golden boys, like everyone else in this wasteland of privilege and hedonism — “Los Angeles, 1983,” we’re told, in case we were having trouble placing the palm trees, the asymmetrical top-heavy haircuts and the post-punk soundtrack — are not so much characters as symbols of, well, of some pretty bad stuff.

The corruption of innocence? The death of feeling? The bad vibes of a decade whose emblems (other than the haircuts and the music) are Ronald Reagan and AIDS? Yes, all of that. And some other stuff I probably forgot about. But so did they.

The entitled young in this world favor cocaine, cigarettes and group sex. Their parents prefer alcohol, prescription medicines and adultery. The children regard the parents with icy contempt. Occasionally a flicker of guilt passes over a parental face, but it just may be that the parents are being played by seasoned actors, many with careers going back to the ’80s, and so can sometimes inject a grain or two of nuance into the glazed, dazed, dull surface of the film.

Kim Basinger is in it, playing Graham’s mom. Also Billy Bob Thornton (as her husband, a movie-studio bigwig), Winona Ryder (as his mistress, a television newscaster), Chris Isaak and, alarmingly if also amusingly, Mickey Rourke. Mr. Rourke plays one of the few nonwealthy people in “The Informers.” He drives a van, sports some strange facial hair and kidnaps a child.

Why? For the same reason that a hyperbolically drugged-out rock star (Mel Raido) punches a sweet-faced groupie from Nebraska. To shock us with our inability to feel especially shocked by anything. In Mr. Ellis’s book — not one of his best, but not without interest — the numb plainness of the prose at times achieves a morose clarity, and the deadpan, brain-dead dialogue is tweaked with satire. Nearly every time Mr. Jordan, working from a script by Mr. Ellis and Nicholas Jarecki, tries for similar effects, he goes badly awry, so that you snicker when the movie is trying to be poignant and groan when it aims to make a joke.

From an opening scene that looks, intriguingly enough, like a Billy Idol video shot by Antonioni, “The Informers” moves through a few rounds of passionless coupling and passive-aggressive conversation, never provoking a reaction more intense than mild irritation or moderate boredom. The performances run the gamut from twitchy to catatonic, and the stoned stiffness of the actors seems to have less to do with the affectlessness of the characters than with their own confusion. “The Informers” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has nudity, sex, drug use and violence. And it’s still boring.

CREDIT : MRQE SITE