the informers s Directed by gregor jordan written by bret easton ellis and nicholas jarecki
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The Informers is adapted from a 1994 story collection by Bret Easton Ellis, whose three fin-de-siecle novels about the go-go 80s—Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, and American Psycho—have all been turned into profitable movies. Ellis wrote most of the stories while he was an undergraduate at Bennington College in Vermont, and they share enough characters that he was able to number the stories and pass them off as a narrative of sorts. In a fine example of form following narcissistic function, every story opens abruptly in first person, and you have to spend a page or two in the narrator’s head before you can figure out who he is. The writing is terse and minimalistic and instead of dependent clauses and punctuation there are lots of conjunctions and the subject is usually some young, tan, bleach-blond teen hanging with his soulless friends by the pool and they’re smoking pot and maybe doing some blow and there’s some girl sunbathing topless and the teen stares at the blue water and someone says something about getting tickets for Oingo Boingo and the end of the world is nigh.
The pall of exploitation hanging over the movie is only exacerbated by the casting: like the soundtrack tunes by Devo, Gary Numan, Wang Chung, Men Without Hats, and A Flock of Seagulls, the actors seem to have been chosen mainly for their 80s cash-in value. Chris Isaak is terrible as a glib businessman who drags his teenage son (one of Graham’s buddies) off for a Hawaiian vacation and tries to use him as a wingman. Mickey Rourke plays one of the aforementioned kidnappers, and after his endearing performance in The Wrestler, it’s a drag to see him typecast again as a heartless scuzzball. Basinger (who costarred with Rourke in the steamy, laughable 9∏ Weeks back in 1986) is saddled with a role that capitalizes on her tabloid reputation as being a few cards short of a deck. And Ryder, who’s never recovered professionally from her 2002 shoplifting conviction, plays a posh celebrity dressed to the nines. After a while you begin to wonder whether you’re watching performers or just bugs trapped in the amber of their own bad publicity.
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