Informers A-list cast fails to deliver flawed film

The Informers captures its audience with a glittery, colorful and erotic atmosphere where morals don't exist, cheating is prevalent and orgies are the preferred kind of sex instead of the occasional indulgence. But it is too glittery and too blinding, like the sun if it were one mile away instead of millions. The film goes excessively out of its way to create such a strikingly incomprehensible picture that even the Lindsay Lohans and Paris Hiltons of the world would not be able to live in it, let alone understand it.

The plot centers on the lives of a handful of individuals from Los Angeles. Most of them are well-to-do, upper class, rich, successful and thus, intoxicated with all the problems stereotyped with their famed Hollywood status: drugs, divorce, adultery, power and money. Billy Bob Thornton plays a movie producer and Kim Bassinger stars as his dilapidated, cut-up but still whole, wife.

Their son Graham (Jon Foster) provides the link between his family and his friends, the youth of the movie and the propagator of all the problems. Graham's best friend is secretly sleeping with his mother (Bassinger) before her movie producer husband (Thornton) moves back in after the end of his pursuit of a female television anchor, played by Winona Ryder. This is just one of the many far-fetched situations that The Informers puts forth.

The movie also tells the tale of a couple of lower lives: a convict kidnapper (Mickey Rourke) and his scared adult nephew. Their lives, too, are greatly overexaggerated. Rourke's mysterious criminal past and his connections are very ambiguous, and his character again plays in the movie's scheme of hyperbole when he kidnaps a kid on a bike in broad daylight.

The ace of spades of the cast was a coked-out, pedophile rock star (Mel Raido), whose band gives the movie its name. The ridicule of his character can be seen in just one scene: He returns to his hotel after a concert to find an underage girl in his bed and starts making out with her for a few seconds before subsequently choking her and then punching her face.

The big names of the cast would seem to indicate a blockbuster that would garner a lot of acclaim. Thornton, Bassinger, Rourke and Ryder all have shined in very good roles. But this movie had none of them. In re-courting the new anchorwoman, Thornton's character tells Ryder's, "I've missed you sweetie." That line alone was convincing enough that Thornton was unable to adequately fulfill the role he was cast as.

Bassinger's troubled housewife character was played relatively well, but the role was still somewhat unbelievable, as she basically gave her husband permission to leave and cheat on her again. Ryder gave a pretty good performance, but by far the best actor in this film was Rourke. His Wrestler character makes a reappearance as a shady ex-con, a weathered but experienced and menacing criminal who bullies his nephew into harboring him, his drugged-up female assistant (Angela Sarafyan) and the child he kidnapped.

The film had potentional. Writer Bret Easton Ellis has created the screenplays for several successful films, which includes cult classic American Psycho. His previous works have centered on shallow characters with no forms of positive influence and the characters in The Informers is no different. Perhaps it is director Gregor Jordan's touch that has such detrimental effects to what could have been good film.

The movie's overall theme was the downfall of immorality. Everyone here does something that society deems as wrong, whether its cheating, abusing power or having multiple sexual partners (at once). In the end, all of this immorality creates each character's loss.

The movie's theme was noble, but the film itself was very bad. The plot was so convoluted and herky-jerky that the audience often will not know exactly what is going on. Almost everyone in the movie owned a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses that were always on their faces, their significance unexplained and questionable.

The fact that the majority of the characters were unclothed or having sex for the majority of the film made it seem that the audience was watching a porno rather than the advertised drama. The theme was good, the cast was very solid, but the story and the movie ultimately fail.

Stay away from The Informers unless you want to see an poorly delivered X-rated movie that was accidentally rated R. The theater was pretty empty, so you could probably get away with pursuing other activities while watching. But then again, why spend money if you aren't going to be watching the movie anyway?