Synopsis
An ex-con working undercover for the FBI gets himself locked up in order to take down the mob.
Review
Third time was the charm with this film, I had such a bad streak watching things that I left the cinema after the first films and didn't get round to this. There's nothing like FOMO to make you watch a film!
Pete is doing stellar work as an informant for the FBI but when a deal goes south he's in a lot of trouble. The buyer turns out to be an undercover cop and instead of heeding Pete's warning he tried to take them down single-handed and in the chaos he's shot and killed. Pete warns his handlers but it's too late, the mob are now owed a debt, the FBI want the bigger fish and the cops want their pound of flesh. The mob want him to get arrested and run their drugs ring from prison and the FBI see a bigger score on the horizon and want him there too, but with Grens on the hunt for a cop killer he isn't safe from anyone in prison.
There's a great cast of actors here and they've definitely shown their abilities in this sort of scenario before but I feel that The Informer doesn't quite give them enough to work with.
Joel Kinnaman plays the good bad guy well, the inner battle his character has shows on his face throughout. Once Pete gets to prison and his story becomes one of survival I thought he was even better. Without such a good performance behind Pete I don't think this film would have held together at all.
When Common started appearing in things I was a little dubious but as time has gone on he's really developed and found himself the right little niche. As Grens he shows he's confident with what he's given and I can't wait to see his next role. (As it happens I didn't have to wait long as he was in The Kitchen and I had no idea.)
Rosamund Pike and Clive Owen are both generally solid actors to see on a movie poster but in this instance I found their characters to be frustrating and a little wooden. Pike is potentially part tree as I notice this in a few of her roles but it's usually perfectly suited, in this though, Wilcox's two different personas felt too different to be believable. Owen as her boss was fine but in a film with so many aggressive and combative characters it was just too much.
It was paced quite well and the only reason I felt distracted at times was because of fellow cinemagoers. We were given a nice balance of action broken up by character pieces and there weren't any times that felt unnecessary or over the top. But then we get to the end of the film. I'd put money on the ending of that film being changed to cut the length and keep it under 2 hours. There was a perfect place to end the film, it would have left you with a "well what happened next" moment but I think that would have been preferable to what we got. We still get that "what's next" but it's much more anticlimactic and meant my last feeling wasn't one of anticipation but confusion. It took me a while to write up some note for this because I was pondering that ending, I'm certain that has changed the score this gets.
Even with my grumbles this isn't a bad film, and I would like to applaud them for remembering some continuity after an incident in the prison, I appreciated that attention to detail... but it isn't good enough to make me forget that ending.
What you should do
This would be a great film to watch when it streams, I'm not sure it would be something you need to own.
Movie thing you wish you could take home
Pete's ability to think quickly under pressure, but without the prison setting.
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