The Informers

Directed by: Gregor Jordan
Written by: Bret Easton Ellis & Nicholas Jarecki
Full credits from IMDb

Based on a story collection by American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis, The Informers, a tone-deaf moral parable about Reagan-era excess, follows seemingly infinite story strands packed with enough naked bodies to make the ‘60s look like the ‘50s. Set primarily in a Los Angeles with morals as gray as the smog, these low-stake narrative threads have very little to do with one another, except for a few contrived interconnections. (Some come together thematically in the end with the clumsiness of a Scrubs episode.) Ostensibly about self-destruction in a moral-deprived milieu—you can tell it’s the ‘80s because everybody’s got a Morrisey haircut and all the characters name-drop famous period-singers while wearing wayfarers—the movie comes across as self-righteous comic book tragedy. Some of the big stars here—Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, Chris Isaak—perform credibly, but the rest of the cast, particularly Kim Basinger and the late Brad Renfro, is as laughably inept as the material. Each story adds up to nothing individually—less than zero, even—and The Informers is exactly the sum of its parts. It's easily on track to be dubbed the worst film of 2009. Grade: F


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