Films constantly get made that are cruel, ugly, and downright bad. The Informers unfortunately falls right into this infamous category. It is an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s (American Psycho) novel of the same name, dealing with interweaving stories and cruel people. This isn’t a “it’s so bad it’s good” type of movie, it truly has no redeeming qualities.
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The Informers is an ensemble piece that involves an always drugged up rock star, a Hollywood executive, a newscaster, an ex-con, a doorman, and a group of relentless young people who only know how to party. It is the 1980’s and all these people are somehow connected through their dark antics. Each are on the verge of destruction, and all are oblivious.
A key to a successful multi-strand narrative is to have interesting characters and that have worthwhile stories, this film doesn’t seem to not be familiar to this concept. With a ninety-eight minute running time, the screen is filled with bland and meandering story-telling. None of these stories ever connect, and nor are they interesting, its jammed packed with too many sub-stories which causes all the characters to feel under-developed. The film also takes itself too serious to the extreme, showing ruthless characters doing uninteresting mean spirited acts. Watching characters commit terrible acts can be watchable, if what there doing is actually engaging. The first two acts never seem to go anywhere except mindless wandering, keeping the audience wondering why they are even watching these characters. The story ends up concluding after the second act, the message of doing this is quite clear, but it was just another example of his poor story-telling and the lack of any authentic character arc. Its hard to believe the same man behind Buffalo Soldiers, a very good film, directed this mess. With every character given too little to do and nothing interesting to do, the film winds up feeling like a never-ending bad dream.
There’s an exceptional cast here, but they can only muster up cringe inducing performances due to the lack of material. Suffered to playing the cliche problem couple is Billy Bob Thornton and Kim Basinger, their story divulges into pure soap opera the first moment we see them on screen. After giving undoubtedly the best performance of last year in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke ironically delivers one of the most forgettable performances of the year as a tough ex-con looking to sell a kid to some vampires, with this sub-plot not even relating to the original book. He’s stooped to playing an extremely bland character with little to do, he isn’t bad, but he never creates an involving character like every other actor. The constant drug taking group is played by Jon Foster, Amber Heard, and Austin Nichols. Their story line has the most screen time, and it is the hardest story to sit through. Each scene devolves into them getting high while trying to look hip. The list goes on of good actors whose talents are wasted here.
Films like these push the envelope of cinematic disgust, its puzzling how a movie like this gets made. Its a testament of how films with such great talent involved can go so wrong. With bland direction, sloppy story-telling, and uninteresting characters, The Informers is not just one of the worst films of the year, but quite possibly one of the worst films of the decade.