I think the exclamation mark mirrors the soundtrack more so than the film, though this punctuation is probably part of director Steven Soderbergh’s humorous tongue in cheek remark on 90’s forced corporate enthusiasm, pre-Enron-like shenanigans and one man’s dynamic attempt to become a whistleblowing hero even if heroism is only in his comic book mind. The Informant! is one of the best films of the year in terms of film as art, or in terms of pushing the proverbial envelope on the imaginative use of film elements. In this case screenplay, acting, and directing.

This is Matt Damon’s best performance since Good Will Hunting. And Steven Soderbergh proves he’s a master director outside of daring indie darling’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) and The Limey (1996), and safe Hollywood Oscar winners like Traffic and Erin Brockovich, both from 2000. The Informant! is probably somewhere between those cinematic ice caps yet surprisingly closer in feel to Schizopolis (1996) and the Ocean’s films with a bit of a Coen Brothers sense about it.

It is the true story of industry price fixing in the 90’s, specifically from inside grain processing company Archer Daniels Midland in Decatur, Illinois and senior executive Mark Whitacre who turned out to be a bi-polar nut job with a Ph.D igniting price-rigging fires from within the company. Whitacre thinks he’s a genius, believes his own lies; he gets so enthralled with his internal monologue about dextrose and lysine, and the worthless bits of information he collects such as facts about strip malls and food courts, and Michael Crighton’s book Rising Sun, later John Grisham’s book The Firm and how similar he and Tom Cruise are and the fictitious espionage he suggests to ADM chiefs, and a sale on Oscar De La Renta ties at Bachrach, and blah, blah, blah, that you can’t help but see him as some sort of suburban banality adict hooked on his own cultural literacy. If it weren’t for the brilliantly comical score (and Bananas (1971) reprise) soundtrack from Marvin Hamlisch we might fail to see this as funny stuff. Funny only because you can’t believe how stupid Damon’s character is. Damon does a superb job convincing us that Whitacre was a sad man that owned a Ferrari and an 8 series V12 BWM Coupe 850i but whose overconfidence and oxymoronic naivete headbutted at times in scenes that were complex hardshelled candies with comedic rich centers. Again, without the Hamlisch score—utilizing musical instruments that sound as funny as their names—it could almost be a prequel to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).

Oscar winning director Soderbergh does a prodigious job creating a psychological profile film with Matt Damon in the lead and taking the script by Scott Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)) to its absolute limit before giving us a phenomenal show stopper of a scene involving Whitacre, Whitacre’s wife Ginger played by Melanie Lynskey, and FBI agent Brian Shepard played by Scott Bakula. Up to this point the script is build up after build up with no exposition for the longest time. Soderbergh holds it in like helium from a kid’s balloon; milks the psychological elaboration of this character until the script is almost out of breath before taking ours in this one confessional scene. You’ll know it when you see it, and you’ll feel at that moment that you’ve witnessed greatness. Even if you don’t quite understand all that truly transpired at AMD (you’ll have to read author Kurt Eichenwald’s book The Informant: A True Story to get all of that). This should be the year’s first Oscar nod.

Rated R for language. 108 minutes. Also stars E! Soup’s Joel McHale and Thomas F. Wilson, a.k.a Biff from Back To The Future (1985). Cinematography is as yellow as the lies Whitacre tells—warm when he’s in the glow of his lies, blue when reality creeps in.

Hamlisch is also on the soundtrack for last week’s number one film, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.