Very well executed

A Major Disappointment

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Don't' listen to most people criticizing this movie. It's ridiculous that it currently has a rating of 5. This is an 8+ movie.**Spoiler** Preferably read this after seeing the movie**It's about AIDS and innocence lost. It's about being young and one day realizing you'll die. Going from being irresponsible, ignorant and immortal towards the opposite of those. The whole movie is leading up to the point where everyone's lives and actions become meaningless, and they will have to rethink and change their lifestyles. Even though this is untold, it also goes without saying and that is the beauty of this film. So it's partly about AIDS being introduced to the world, partly about becoming a grown-up or 'not-young-anymore', but mostly: It's about that one point in time when reality changes something and you realize you can never go back and nothing will be the same. The purported shallowness of this movie only serves to reinforce the depth of this transition. 'The higher they hang, the harder they fall' and so on. That's what the movie is about, a lot of people here obviously didn't get that so I guess the movie could be criticized for being too convoluted about its plot-twist ending.

Past film adaptations of Bret Easton Ellis novels have been well received. So, with Ellis on board as screenwriter, you could see where stars like Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke and Winona Ryder would have been attracted to The Informers. Unfortunately for all involved, including Ellis who would pretty much disown the movie after its release, the script was handed to director Gregor Jordan. And Jordan made a complete mess of it. He wanted to take things in a darker direction. Well, he succeeded in making it dark. He didn't succeed in anything else. He ended up making a truly awful movie.The film unfolds in early 1980s Los Angeles. It's a sex, drugs and rock and roll story. For brevity's sake, let's just say that everyone is sleeping with everyone else. That's pretty much accurate. It's an ensemble piece with a whole bunch of characters, none of whom you actually end up caring about. All these characters have their own stories which are in some cases loosely intertwined, in some cases not intertwined at all and thus ultimately pointless. Thornton and Basinger just mail in their performances, they're totally lifeless. Rourke's character is a waste of time, he's only in one of those completely pointless subplots. Ryder really has only a bit part. These older stars may draw the attention but the film's story focuses more on the younger generation. Nobody in this younger crowd stands out as being particularly interesting, none of the performances rise above the mundane. They have some sex, then we cut back to one of the other story lines, then we come back to them again and they have more sex. If nothing else at least Amber Heard, playing a young woman who gets passed around like a used handkerchief, looks spectacular. So there's that.The only character who comes across as truly sympathetic is a young doorman, Jack, played by Brad Renfro. If any performer comes away from this film with any credit at all it's Renfro, playing a guy struggling to deal with the shady doings of his uncle, the Rourke character. Unfortunately Renfro's performance largely goes for naught as this story really doesn't tie into the main plot at all. Honestly though saying this film has a main plot is probably giving it too much credit. There is no real story tying this thing together. Too much time is wasted on characters who serve no purpose. There's a drugged-out rock singer who likes to sleep with young girls. There's a guy on the world's most awkward vacation in Hawaii with his dad. What do these characters have to do with anything? Nothing. Nothing at all. The film is just a jumbled, largely incoherent, mess. And then it just ends. No resolution. All these stories, no endings. On the one hand you're grateful it's over because you certainly don't want to watch this film any longer. On the other hand you're left feeling insulted that you wasted any time at all watching this pointless film which was ultimately going nowhere.

This movie's reputation is a good example of herd mentality. The negative critical reaction to it was so overwhelming, that it even its screenwriter Bret Ellis became more and more critical of the film (although he had his own personal drama while trying to get this project made and really disagreed with director's interpretation). This movie IS an interpretation of the book it is based on and in my opinion, while it might not be the most entertaining interpretation there can be, it is actually very close to the . The film creates kind of a static feeling, a feeling of relaxation and being frozen in the moment - and it is the same feeling I've got from the book. Bret Ellis himself wanted a more active and fast-paced movie, and it probably would have been more entertaining, but also probably farther from source material, for better or worse. Some people have said the script was supposed to be much funnier and movie is too dark in its tone. Well it is subjective, in my opinion the humor is all there and actually it is even better for the dark humor of the situations and dialogue to amplify the darkness and despair. In my opinion the movie was hated so much to a large degree because people just don't want to see this more ambiguous material on the screen. They want to see more obvious, spelled out stories, heroes, villains, moral messages, powerful climaxes etc - which are not bad things, there are brilliant movies based on these elements, but they are not be all end all of art. This film, like the book it is based on, shows, explores, sometimes exaggerates and makes fun of - contrasts and conflicts of life, ambiguity of different life situations. What makes both the film and the book interesting is they avoid a lot of the more fake and unnatural literary devices like clear and powerful dramatic conclusions, idealized characters, forced plot. And people generally don't like this. They want a more clear "heroes" or "villains", they want plot to move quickly, film to have a clear message etc. But the most interesting thing about this film is there is no clear message like "Drugs are bad, go to school" and characters are more ambiguous. If you are honest with yourself, you won't just write them off as selfish empty people (the reaction to this film and a lot of Ellis prose shows that a lot of people don't want to be honest with themselves) - they are more interesting and while mostly being tragic have a perspective you can understand. A protagonist is a young guy who has all the money and time he can need and has group sex with very attractive people which, is very seductive. He starts to develop more traditional feelings toward a girl he sleeps with and tries to have more exclusivity with her, which she doesn't want at the moment because she still loves the polygamy and pleasures it brings and also may be too infantile to understand his impulse - also bad things are about to happen to her. An estranged father played excellently by Chris Isaac is a certain man who was disappointed in marriage and became a bachelor and is hitting on women everywhere without conscious effort and tries to connect with his son, but the man he is, his history with his son and how it has shaped his son's personality make it futile.Even the scary sociopath played by Billy Bob Thornton has a couple of moments when you understand where's he coming from - like his honest answer "I don't know" to his wife's question "Did you ever love me". In the end although I like the movie I must say I agree with Bret Ellis that if the movie was at the same time made longer to include more scenes that were shot and some scenes were made faster and less long and heavy it honestly might have benefited and made more rewatchable.

When I first started watching The Informers, I wanted to shut if off because I was bored. It started slow, but you have to watch through to understand the subplot. That was how everyone was connected to each other, and that they generally shared loose morals and lack of trust. There wasn't a single relationship of complete trust in this film. The thread of who was sleeping with whom could be traced through many of the main characters, which became important in light of AIDS. People didn't understand AIDS in 1983, which was readily apparent in The Informers. The band which the movie gets its name from represented the height of immorality and seemed to set the tone for the film. The character Graham even asks his friend Martin what would happen if you had no one to tell you right from wrong. He wanted someone like that, but didn't know who to trust. He then asked Martin whether he slept around, and Martin lied to his face. Graham's girlfriend was loose, and his parents weren't there to guide him. In the end the only moral characters were the doorman who let the captive kid go, and Graham, who was "the one who loves Christie." Christie may have been the most immoral of all, and she ended up dying of AIDS on a beach. Graham tells her that there is no more sun, and this seems to imply that the party is over, which meant also that her life was over.Overall, a good film. You need to watch it through to understand it. The relationships that should have been closest were far from it. People kept telling Graham that he has everything, and yet he had nothing that really mattered. The most redeeming characters were Graham and Jack the hotel doorman (the actor who played the doorman died of a drug overdose!). Not a film to buy, though.