The Informers is an awful movie about a bunch of awful yuppies doing awful things to each other. The women are mostly treated like sex objects and the men are either bisexual or total horndogs. Pretty much all of them are on drugs. This movie is based on a book by Bret Easton Ellis, who also wrote American Psycho. I got the impression that the whole cast of characters were meant to personify the excess of the 80's and that the overall point of the story was for it to serve as a metaphor for AIDS.

The book, which I have not read and do not intend to ever read, was written as a series of short stories and is semi-autobiographical. The movie does have some highly memorable scenes, but as a whole it just isn't very good. It tries to lay out the story using multiple intermingled plotlines, but doesn't devote enough time to any of them to make you care for the characters. The fact that most of the characters and liars and schemers doesn't help the matter, either.

Plot is a relative notion in this movie. The characters have stories that run together, but each character has their own individual thing going on and it loosely ties into everything else. The theme of this movie is personal relationships and the way that people are connected, and it uses that theme as a way of showing how sexual promiscuity can have far-reaching effects. You can connect each person in this movie to one another by two or three sexual partners.

The spider web of sexual linkage is what leads me to believe that this story is a hard line moral lesson about AIDS and Roman-like living in the 80's. All of the people involved are rich, beautiful, and very unhappy. At the center of it all is a beautiful young woman (Amber Heard) who stays topless for more than half of her screen time, and early on she starts showing signs of AIDS in the form of skin sores. Since she is connected, in more than one way, to everyone else in the story, then it's easy to say those other people will likely be HIV positive given how much ‘contact' they have with each other. If there is anything to get from this mess of a movie, it's that no matter how rich and beautiful you are, there will always be consequences for your actions.

This movie doesn't have any main characters, but it seemed like the most screen time was given to Jon Foster, who is the brother of actor Ben Foster. Billy Bob Thornton and Kim Basinger also have supporting roles as a couple whose relationship is on the rocks, and Winona Ryder plays the other woman for Thornton. Singer Chris Isaak has a small role as a sleazy father to a son who just might be gay. This is the last movie made by Brad Renfro, who died of a drug overdose in early 2008. Mickey Rourke also has a small role as a heartless kidnapper trying to sell a little boy to pedophiles. This was directed by Gregor Jordan, who previously made Ned Kelly and Buffalo Soldiers.

Before seeing The Informers, I wondered why it fell so far under the radar with its cast and the fact that it is based on a Bret Easton Ellis novel. After having seen the movie, I completely understand. I read a bunch of reviews on different sites and it seems like for every one person that liked the movie and found meaning in it, there are four more people who thought it was a big pile of crap. I'm more in the middle in that I thought it was a somewhat meaningful pile of crap. I would never want to watch this again, but I don't regret seeing it. I still don't recommend it.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age