Movie review: The Informers

by Alex Bentley

The Informers is the latest Bret Easton Ellis novel to make its way to the big screen, and like its forebears (Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Rules of Attraction), it's chock-full of depravities of the sexual, violent, and drug-related nature. With Informers, however, Ellis is making his first attempt at (co)writing a screenplay (he's also the executive producer), and one gets the feeling he should've stayed in the background.

Set in 1983 (and feeling every bit of it), the film is a banal look at the lives of a group of spoiled twentysomethings, their parents, a rock star, and, apropos of nothing, a two-bit thug played by Mickey Rourke. Jon Foster (The Door in the Floor) is ostensibly the lead as Graham, a small-time drug dealer who hates his parents, William and Laura (Billy Bob Thornton and Kim Basinger), has a love/hate relationship with Christie (Amber Heard), and sometimes sleeps with his best friend Martin (Austin Nichols).

Boundaries are all but absent throughout the film. Laura sleeps with Martin, even though she's getting back together with William, who still pines for Cheryl (Winona Ryder), with whom he had an affair. Martin also gets down with Christie, sometimes with and sometimes without Graham. The rock star, naturally, sleeps with anyone who comes his way, and the younger, the better. However, he still holds a flame for his ex-wife, who (surprise!) is also sleeping with Martin.

With the year the film is set in and all the sex being had, it's no surprise that AIDS rears its ugly head, though the person it affects and how quickly it affects them is shocking in a “You really expect me to believe that?” kind of way. Side trips are made to Hawaii, where Chris Isaak plays a not-so-good dad who shows a little too much interest in how much action his son is getting, and to the goings-on of Peter (Rourke), who co-opts the home of his nephew Jack (Brad Renfro) for his nefarious deeds.

The filmmakers take pains to establish just how everyone in the film is connected, even though some of those connections are laughable at best (for instance: Jack is the doorman in Graham's apartment building, yet they share one relatively meaningless scene together). Ellis, co-writer Nicholas Jarecki, and director Gregor Jordan seem to want to find great meaning in the empty lives of their characters, but they're never able to approach even a semblance of depth. The skin-deep nature of the film is given a literal bent with Foster, Heard, and Nichols, who are featured nude (or semi-nude) and glistening throughout many of their scenes.

None of the actors come off all that well, though Foster and Heard probably acquit themselves the best. Both Thornton and Basinger look like they're going through the motions, and Rourke has little to do but glower menacingly. The biggest disappointment is Renfro, who, in his last role prior to his death early last year, comes off as a hack, shuffling and mumbling his way through his scenes.

There have been plenty of films made about the excesses of the 1980s, and there could still be some valuable insight to be discovered by making a film set in that decade. But The Informers is not the film to give you that understanding.

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